The NMI Supreme Court affirmed the trial court\u2019s decision granting partial summary judgment declaring that Shinji Fujie and the Toshin Group International (collectively, \u201cToshin Group\u201d) were entitled to possess property they leased from Joaquin Atalig.<\/p>\n
On appeal, Atalig and his business partner, Ramon K. Quichocho, argued that summary judgment was improper because there was a genuine issue of material fact about whether the lease was properly terminated due to the Toshin Group abandoning the property. The high court disagreed.<\/p>\n
The high court began with the standard for abandonment, which requires the tenant: (1) vacate the leased property without justification; (2) vacate without intending to return; and (3) fail to pay the rent. This standard foreclosed any abandonment argument because the Toshin Group could never fail to pay the rent\u2014they had prepaid the entire lease. Accordingly, there was no question about whether the property was abandoned\u2014it was not\u2014so the high court affirmed the trial court\u2019s decision.<\/p>\n
After concluding the trial court made the correct decision, the high court expressed concerns with Quichocho\u2019s briefing\u2014specifically the failure to present the proper legal standard for abandonment. Because Quichocho had been involved in a similar federal case that set forth the Commonwealth\u2019s standard for abandonment and the trial court in this case also set forth the same standard, the Supreme Court was troubled by Quichocho\u2019s failure to provide that standard or argue why it did not apply.<\/p>\n
The Supreme Court\u2019s full opinion, 2014 MP 14, can be found at http:\/\/www.cnmilaw.org\/supreme14.html. (PR)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The NMI Supreme Court affirmed the trial court\u2019s decision granting partial summary judgment declaring that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[56,292,139],"class_list":["post-185279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-business-3","tag-mp","tag-supreme-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185279","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\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185279\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}