Contrary to a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit\u2019s findings, Commonwealth Retirement Association board member Sapuro Rayphand has already paid the docketing and filing fees for his appeal.<\/p>\n
Rayphand emailed Saipan Tribune on Thursday a copy of his receipt indicating he paid $455 in docketing fee on Dec. 30, 2011.<\/p>\n
As of yesterday at 2:30pm, a check by Saipan Tribune at the U.S. District Court for the NMI showed that the 9th Circuit has yet to clarify its order regarding the docketing fees issue.<\/p>\n
A district court staff, however, confirmed that Rayphand had already made the payment, but that a problem occurred because of the way Rayphand filed it.<\/p>\n
The 9th Circuit is expected to issue a new order to clarify the docketing fee issue.<\/p>\n
The 9th Circuit recently issued an order, stating that it has found out upon a review of the docket that Rayphand has not paid the docketing and filing fees for his appeal.<\/p>\n
The Ninth Circuit gave Rayphand 21 days to comply with its order or otherwise his appeal will be automatically dismissed by the clerk for failure to prosecute.<\/p>\n
The Ninth Circuit ordered Rayphand to file a motion to proceed in forma pauperis, and pay $455 to the district court as the docketing and filing fees for this appeal.<\/p>\n
Forma pauperis refers to a court\u2019s permission to an indigent to initiate a legal action without having to pay for court fees or costs due to the party\u2019s lack of financial resources. <\/p>\n
On Sept. 8, 2011, Rayphand, through Bruce Jorgensen, notified the District Court that he wants the Fund\u2019s lawsuit against the CNMI government to be removed from the Superior Court and transferred to the federal court.<\/p>\n
Rayphand stated that it has been more than two years now since Superior Court associate judge Kenneth Govendo rendered a $230 million judgment in the case yet there has been little, if any, meaningful steps toward enforcement of the judgment. <\/p>\n
In November, U.S. District Court for the NMI designated Judge Frances M. Tydingco-Gatewood found improper Rayphand\u2019s removal of the Fund\u2019s lawsuit and remanded it to the Superior Court. She also ordered Rayphand to pay attorney\u2019s fees and costs to the Fund.<\/p>\n
Tydingco-Gatewood noted that much of Rayphand\u2019s argument for intervention is nonsensical and unrelated to the issues at hand.<\/p>\n
Rayphand appealed to the Ninth Circuit to reverse Tydingco-Gatewood\u2019s order.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Contrary to a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit\u2019s findings, Commonwealth Retirement Association board member Sapuro Rayphand has already paid the docketing and filing fees for his appeal.<\/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-158376","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\/158376","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=158376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158376\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}