The two-day settlement talks on Betty Johnson\u2019s petitions for multi-million-dollar payments for attorneys\u2019 fees and costs could occur starting yesterday before Hawaii chief bankruptcy judge Robert J. Faris. <\/p>\n
In an order issued Friday, U.S. District Court for the NMI designated judge Frances Tydingco-Gatewood said the counsels of the parties in Johnson\u2019s class action should be prepared to advise the court whether they have reached a resolution of their petitions for attorneys\u2019 fees. <\/p>\n
Tydingco-Gatewood disclosed that she held a telephone conference with counsels on Thursday to discuss concerns related to the various petitions for attorneys\u2019 fees and costs.<\/p>\n
At the end of the conference, Tydingco-Gatewood said she agreed to vacate the status hearing scheduled for yesterday, Monday, to give the parties more time with their settlement discussions on their claims, with the assistance of Faris.<\/p>\n
She said the counsels expected the discussions with Faris to occur yesterday and today, Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The judge said she ordered all counsels to appear for a follow up teleconference on Wednesday at 8:15am.<\/p>\n
If a settlement is not achieved, Tydingco-Gatewood said the court will order all Johnson counsels to file a single, unified petition for fees, along with a proposed briefing schedule to hear the petition.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf counsels are unable to reach agreement on a single, unified petition, then counsels for the plaintiff may submit a partially unified petition covering those matters where agreement can be reached, along with a proposed briefing schedule,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
If an agreement cannot be achieved, then the counsels were told to be prepared for a full evidentiary hearing on all matters in dispute.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll counsel shall appear personally at [the] evidentiary hearing so the court can properly assess credibility in making its determination of a fair and reasonable award of attorneys fees which accurately reflects the contribution by each attorney,\u201d Tydingco-Gatewood said.<\/p>\n
The judge tentatively set the evidentiary hearing for Friday, Jan. 31 at 9am.<\/p>\n
Johnson has a battery of lawyers\u2014Bruce Jorgensen, Hawaii-based Bronster Hoshibata law firm, Timothy Lord, and Stephen Woodruff.<\/p>\n
Jorgensen is demanding at least $18.6 million; Bronster Hoshibata is seeking $17.5 million; Lord is asking for either $3.6 million or $5.9 million; and Woodruff is requesting first for $1.01 million and now $2.9 million. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The two-day settlement talks on Betty Johnson\u2019s petitions for multi-million-dollar payments for attorneys\u2019 fees and costs could occur starting yesterday before Hawaii chief bankruptcy judge Robert J. Faris. <\/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-175085","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\/175085","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=175085"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175085\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}