The federal court on Wednesday dismissed businessman John T. Sablan\u2019s and his JG Sablan Rock Quarry Inc.\u2019s lawsuit against the Department of Public Lands over a mining permit issue.<\/p>\n
U.S. District Court for the NMI Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona dismissed with prejudice the lawsuit following the parties\u2019 request after they reached a settlement deal.<\/p>\n
Dismissed with prejudice means the case cannot be re-opened again.<\/p>\n
Manglona said the court has reviewed the settlement agreement and shall retain jurisdiction to enforce that deal.<\/p>\n
Attorney Michael W. Dotts, as counsel for Sablan and JG Sablan Rock Quarry Inc., and assistant attorney general Peter B. Prestley, as counsel for defendant DPL, recently filed in court a stipulated dismissal.<\/p>\n
Dotts and Prestley informed the court that having reached a settlement, they agree to the dismissal of the lawsuit, with all parties to bear their own fees and costs.<\/p>\n
The lawyers asked the court to retain jurisdiction to enforce their settlement agreement. They submitted their settlement deal to the court for review.<\/p>\n
Sablan and JG Sablan Rock Quarry reportedly reached a $4.8-million settlement with the CNMI government in connection with the company\u2019s legal battle with DPL that began in 2006 when DPL terminated JG Sablan\u2019s mining permit.<\/p>\n
At a settlement hearing last June 24, Dotts disclosed that Sablan has agreed to pay $4,806,867 to the CNMI government and the latter will issue a mining permit for Pagan Island.<\/p>\n
The length of the permit will be for 20 years, with a $100,000 permit fee payable in 120 days from its execution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The federal court on Wednesday dismissed businessman John T. Sablan\u2019s and his JG Sablan Rock…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[26,93,175,259],"class_list":["post-176565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-cnmi","tag-district-court","tag-dpl","tag-lawsuit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176565","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\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176565\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}