David L. Wickline, the former president and CEO of the United Micronesia Development Association Inc., has moved to the federal court a lawsuit the UMDA recently filed against him in the Superior Court. <\/p>\n
Wickline, through counsel Colin M. Thompson, filed on Monday a notice of removal in the U.S. District Court for the NMI.<\/p>\n
Thompson said that Wickline, who is now based in Occidental, California, received a copy of UMDA\u2019s complaint and summons last Jan. 14.<\/p>\n
Thompson said this lawsuit may be removed to a federal court in that it is a civil action between citizens of different \u201cstates\u201d and the matter in controversy exceeds $75,000.<\/p>\n
Wickline served as the president and CEO of UMDA from 2010 to 2013. He also served those years as a member of the UMDA board of directors.<\/p>\n
Thompson said the complaint alleges that Wickline \u201cclaims to be entitled to $400,000 in severance pay, $170,000 in unpaid housing allowance, and approximately $30,000 in medical expenses.\u201d<\/p>\n
The lawyer said the complaint also alleges that his client claims to be entitled to $5,437,500 worth of stock options for shares of stock in UMDA, which the latter gave him in October 2010.<\/p>\n
Thompson said the complaint alleges that Wickline has no right to additional compensation and has no right to UMDA stock options.<\/p>\n
\u201cAccordingly, the matter in controversy exceeds $75,000,\u201d he pointed out.<\/p>\n
In the lawsuit, UMDA seeks damages from Wickline for unlawful conduct and asks the court to declare various claims asserted by the defendant to be meritless.<\/p>\n
UMDA filed the lawsuit after the company and Wickline were unable to resolve their disputes through mediation.<\/p>\n
UMDA board chair Jose Lifoifoi stated in a previous press statement that the board was dissatisfied with Wickline\u2019s performance as CEO so he was fired and the shareholders decided not to re-elect him to the board. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
David L. Wickline, the former president and CEO of the United Micronesia Development Association Inc., has moved to the federal court a lawsuit the UMDA recently filed against him in the Superior Court. <\/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-175601","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\/175601","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=175601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175601\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}