On Wednesday, June 8, 2011 the Commonwealth Supreme Court issued a procedural ruling in Owens v. Commonwealth Health Center, interpreting the revised Northern Mariana Islands Supreme Court Rules (effective Jan. 13, 2010).<\/p>\n
Plaintiff Alvin Owens appealed a final judgment of the CNMI Superior Court on March 12, 2008. Several days later, the defendant Commonwealth Health Center filed a notice of cross appeal. CHC\u2019s initial deadline to file its cross appeal brief was July 8, 2010. CHC asked the Court for an extension of time to file its brief, and the Supreme Court Clerk of Court granted the extension. CHC\u2019s filing deadline was reset to Aug. 9, 2010. CHC did not file its brief by Aug. 9, nor did it ask the Court for another extension. On Aug. 30\u201421 days after the filing deadline lapsed\u2014CHC filed its cross appeal brief along with a separate motion to file a late brief. The Supreme Court Clerk rejected CHC\u2019s motion.<\/p>\n
CHC subsequently filed a second motion asking a single justice to review the Clerk\u2019s denial, arguing that the Clerk lacked the authority to rule on its motion. A single justice reviewed CHC\u2019s second motion and issued an order on Nov. 1, 2010, upholding the Clerk\u2019s denial of CHC\u2019s first motion. CHC then filed a third motion asking all three justices to reconsider the second motion.<\/p>\n
In considering CHC\u2019s third motion, the full Court determined that the Clerk had no authority to deny CHC\u2019s first motion once the filing deadline lapsed on Aug. 9. The Court further held that, under the circumstances, all three justices were required to review CHC\u2019s first motion. <\/p>\n
In weighing the merits of CHC\u2019s first motion, the full Court stated that according to the Supreme Court Rules, motions to file late briefs are \u201chighly disfavored\u201d under certain circumstances. As CHC allowed its filing deadline to lapse when it could have asked for another extension of time, the Court held that CHC\u2019s first motion was highly disfavored. The Court noted that the \u201chighly disfavored\u201d standard was added to the Supreme Court Rules in January 2010 and that it was unique to the CNMI. <\/p>\n
The Court further held that, generally speaking, the \u201chighly disfavored\u201d standard meant that the Court would not grant motions to file late briefs unless the cause of the late filing was beyond the control of the party asking for more time. The Court found that the assistant attorney general tasked with filing the cross appeal brief had knowingly allowed the filing deadline to lapse. On this ground, the Court determined that CHC could not overcome the \u201chighly disfavored\u201d standard. Accordingly, the Court denied CHC\u2019s motion to file a late brief.<\/p>\n
The Supreme Court\u2019s full opinion is Owens v. Commonwealth Health Center, 2011 MP 6, and can be found at http:\/\/www.cnmilaw.org\/supreme_11.htm.[I] (CNMI Judiciary)[\/I]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On Wednesday, June 8, 2011 the Commonwealth Supreme Court issued a procedural ruling in Owens v. Commonwealth Health Center, interpreting the revised Northern Mariana Islands Supreme Court Rules (effective Jan. 13, 2010).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-152578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152578"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152578\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}