U.S. District Court for the NMI Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona issued an order yesterday that awarded additional attorney\u2019s fees to Emerenciana Peter-Palican, who won in her lawsuit against the CNMI government for her termination in 2006 as special assistant for Women\u2019s Affairs.<\/p>\n
Manglona determined that Peter-Palican is entitled to $4,950 in attorney\u2019s fees, on top of the $29,407.50 in costs and attorney\u2019s fees the court previously awarded her.<\/p>\n
The judge issued the order after Peter-Palican asked for an additional $4,950 in attorney\u2019s fees to cover the cost of responding to the CNMI government\u2019s post-trial motions.<\/p>\n
On June 29, 2010, the court awarded the plaintiff $450 in costs and $29,407.50 in attorney\u2019s fees as the prevailing party in the lawsuit.<\/p>\n
Subsequently, the CNMI government filed a motion for a new trial and other relief. Peter-Palican opposed the motion.<\/p>\n
On Sept. 1, 2010, the court denied the motion and vacated the hearing. Peter-Palican then filed the request for additional costs.<\/p>\n
The plaintiff claimed she spent 22 hours in preparation to respond to post-trial motions and seeks compensation at the rate of $225 an hour.<\/p>\n
In granting the request, Manglona determined that the billing record provides enough detail to assess the reasonableness of the time spent.<\/p>\n
Manglona said the rate of $225 an hour has already been determined to be reasonable.<\/p>\n
The court ordered the CNMI government in March 2010 to pay Peter-Palican $216,049.88 in back wages. The court also ordered the government and Gov. Benigno R. Fitial to re-appoint her within 30 days to a government position that has a salary to or greater than what she used to have.<\/p>\n
The CNMI government and Fitial appealed. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
U.S. District Court for the NMI Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona issued an order yesterday that awarded additional attorney\u2019s fees to Emerenciana Peter-Palican, who won in her lawsuit against the CNMI government for her termination in 2006 as special assistant for Women\u2019s Affairs.<\/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-160504","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\/160504","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=160504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160504\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}