The CNMI government and Betty Johnson\u2019s local counsel, Stephen Woodruff, reached a settlement agreement yesterday in the latter\u2019s petition for attorney\u2019s fees and costs, according to sources.<\/p>\n
Sources said that no amount has been stated yet. <\/p>\n
In his petition, Woodruff is asking for $2.9 million. But the Office of the Attorney General on Tuesday expressed the CNMI government\u2019s opposition even to a recommendation to award Woodruff $400,000 for his work in the case.<\/p>\n
Johnson\u2019s Hawaii-based counsel, Bronster Hoshibata, made the $400,000 recommendation. <\/p>\n
Meanwhile, sources said that Bronster Hoshibata and Johnson\u2019s other counsel, Timothy Lord, did not reach a settlement agreement with the CNMI government as of yesterday.<\/p>\n
Bronster Hoshibata and Lord are expected to argue their fees at an evidentiary hearing on Monday in federal court.<\/p>\n
Bronster Hoshibata is demanding $17.5 million, while Lord is asking for either $3.6 million or $5.9 million.<\/p>\n
According to the minutes of a telephone conference among the parties in the case on Tuesday, U.S. District Court for the NMI designated judge Frances Tydingco-Gatewood gave the lawyers 24 hours to finalize all settlement negotiations.<\/p>\n
Tydingco-Gatewood noted that to date, only Johnson\u2019s original counsel, Bruce Jorgensen, has agreed to settle with the CNMI government.<\/p>\n
Jorgensen and the CNMI government have agreed that the terms of their settlement should remain confidential for now. The terms, however, will be disclosed once the final agreement is signed.<\/p>\n
Another telephonic status conference was held yesterday.<\/p>\n
Tydingco-Gatewood also ordered that the evidentiary hearing scheduled for Friday be moved to Monday, Feb. 3, at 9:30am. <\/p>\n
Last week, Jorgensen filed a \u201cunified statement\u201d in support of his fee petition, saying he is amenable to a 7-percent reduction of hours and fees, lowering his billable hours to 3,678.7 hours and total fees to $1,195,580.10. Jorgensen\u2019s initial request was at least $18.6 million. <\/p>\n
Under the settlement agreement, the CNMI government will shoulder the attorneys\u2019 fees and costs of Johnson\u2019s counsels upon the court\u2019s approval. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The CNMI government and Betty Johnson\u2019s local counsel, Stephen Woodruff, reached a settlement agreement yesterday in the latter\u2019s petition for attorney\u2019s fees and costs, according to sources.<\/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-175473","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\/175473","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=175473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175473\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}