A federal jury trial began yesterday in a lawsuit filed by an insurance company that is suing the owner of a clothing store in Garapan over the alleged intentional burning of the establishment to collect $404,718.53 in fire insurance.<\/p>\n
When Saipan Tribune left the courtroom yesterday afternoon, U.S. District Court for the NMI Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona was still selecting the members of the jury.<\/p>\n
Once a jury is impaneled, jury instructions then opening statements normally follow.<\/p>\n
Attorney Richard W. Pierce is representing FirstNet Insurance Co. Attorneys Ramon Quichocho and Michael Dotts are counsels for Zhen Rui Brother Corp. that owns the former BL\u2019s Clothing Store.<\/p>\n
A fire broke out at the BL Clothing Store on Oct. 30, 2010. <\/p>\n
In March 2011, fire policy insurer FirstNet sued Zhen Rui Brother Corp. for allegedly deliberately setting off the fire so that the owner could claim $404,718.53 in insurance proceeds.<\/p>\n
Zhen Rui Brother Corp later filed a counterclaim against FirstNet, alleging breach of contract, breach of implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, insurance bad faith, and unfair or deceptive business practices.<\/p>\n
In December, Manglona denied Zhen Rui Brother Corp.\u2019s motion for summary judgment, ruling that FirstNet has presented more than enough evidence to establish a dispute over liability for the jury to resolve at trial.<\/p>\n
Manglona said it is undisputed that Zhen Rui Brother Corp.\u2019s BL Clothing Store suffered substantial fire loss only a few months after the company took out the insurance policy.<\/p>\n
Manglona said that firefighters had to break open the doors of the building to gain access and only the store\u2019s owner, Zheng Biao, and an employee had keys.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A federal jury trial began yesterday in a lawsuit filed by an insurance company that is suing the owner of a clothing store in Garapan over the alleged intentional burning of the establishment to collect $404,718.53 in fire insurance.<\/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-158518","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\/158518","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=158518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158518\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}