Betty Johnson\u2019s California-based counsel, Timothy Lord, is appealing to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit the federal court\u2019s denial of his attorney\u2019s fees and costs.<\/p>\n
Lord wants the Ninth Circuit to reverse U.S. District Court for the NMI designated judge Frances M. Tydingco-Gatewood order on Dec. 9, 2014, denying his petition for attorney\u2019s fees and costs.<\/p>\n
Lord has notified the District Court last week about his appeal to the Ninth Circuit. He did not provide other information in the notice.<\/p>\n
In the Dec. 9 order, Tydingco-Gatewood approved the CNMI agreement to pay $800,000 in attorney\u2019s fees and costs to Betty Johnson\u2019s original counsel, Bruce Jorgensen.<\/p>\n
In a separate order that same day, Tydingco-Gatewood denied awarding fees to Johnson\u2019s other counsel, Lord.<\/p>\n
Tydingco-Gatewood said having considered the CNMI government\u2019s and Jorgensen\u2019s stipulated motion for approval of Jorgensen\u2019s fees, as well as all arguments and submissions, she finds the settlement agreement to be fair and reasonable.<\/p>\n
The judge said the settlement agreement was reached after the parties in Johnson\u2019s class action participated in settlement talks with Hawaii chief bankruptcy judge Robert J. Faris.<\/p>\n
With respect to Lord\u2019s petition for fees and costs, Tydingco-Gatewood said that Lord has not shown that his work produced a concrete beneficial result for the class.<\/p>\n
Tydingco-Gatewoood, however, stated that she is disappointed that Jorgensen did not include the work performed by Lord or his paralegal in his original fee petition or in his settlement discussions with the CNMI government, especially since it was he who sought Lord\u2019s assistance during the initial stages of the litigation.<\/p>\n
The judge said for reasons not completely clear to the court, Jorgensen and Lord parted ways on less than amicable terms.<\/p>\n
Lord\u2019s initial demand for payment was either $3.6 million or $5.9 million. The CNMI government opposed granting fees to Lord.<\/p>\n
Tydingco-Gatewood had already approved the payment for Johnson\u2019s other counsels, Bronster Hoshibata law firm in the amount of $6.5 million and Stephen Woodruff in the amount of $185,000. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Betty Johnson\u2019s California-based counsel, Timothy Lord, is appealing to the U.S. Court of Appeals for…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900,4],"tags":[941,26,93],"class_list":["post-188952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","category-local-news","tag-bronster-hoshibata","tag-cnmi","tag-district-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188952","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=188952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188952\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}