The Office of the Attorney General is opposing Betty Johnson\u2019s counsel Bronster Hoshibata law firm\u2019s recommendation to award Johnson\u2019s local counsel, Stephen Woodruff, $400,000 in attorney\u2019s fees and costs. <\/p>\n
In the CNMI government\u2019s opposition, assistant attorney general Teresita J. Sablan said that, as with Woodruff\u2019s opinion that he spent at least 300 hours on this case, the court should not accept Bronster\u2019s \u201cunsupported opinion\u201d that Woodruff deserves $400,000.<\/p>\n
Sablan said the court has given Woodruff chance after chance to file documents that justify his requested attorney\u2019s fees and he has failed to provide full justification each time.<\/p>\n
The government lawyer said that under the Johnson settlement agreement, Woodruff is entitled \u201cto reasonable fees\u201d as approved by the court.<\/p>\n
She pointed out that the lawyer\u2019s reasonable fee award is his lodestar amount of 139.7 hours multiplied by an hourly rate that the court determines is commensurate with his skill and reputation.<\/p>\n
\u201cA multiplier is not justified because Mr. Woodruff played a minimal role in the case,\u201d Sablan noted.<\/p>\n
Attorney Margery Bronster recommended awarding Woodruff $400,000 for his work in the case. <\/p>\n
Woodruff is asking for $2.9 million. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Office of the Attorney General is opposing Betty Johnson\u2019s counsel Bronster Hoshibata law firm\u2019s recommendation to award Johnson\u2019s local counsel, Stephen Woodruff, $400,000 in attorney\u2019s fees and costs. <\/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-175448","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\/175448","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=175448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175448\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}