Disbarred lawyer Ramon K. Quichocho and his wife, Frances, have been found liable to pay a total of $387,791.15 to businesswoman Jung Ja Kim for her damages, costs, and attorney\u2019s fees.<\/p>\n
The award brings to $2,799,510.24 the total amount that the Quichocho couple is liable to pay Kim.<\/p>\n
On March 28, 2014, a federal court jury reached a unanimous verdict holding the Quichocho couple and his law firm liable to pay a total of $2,411,719.09 in damages to Kim. The trial in Kim\u2019s racketeering lawsuit began on Feb. 3, 2014.<\/p>\n
In her order on Monday, U.S. District Court for the NMI Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona ruled that the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act requires that Kim receive treble damages, costs, and reasonable attorney\u2019s fees.<\/p>\n
Manglona, however, agreed with the Quichochos that some of the fees and costs requested are inadequately documented.<\/p>\n
Manglona amended the judgment issued against the Quichochos to reflect the trebling of damages in each of Kim\u2019s three RICO claims, from $25,000 to $75,000, for a total of $225,000.<\/p>\n
In granting Kim\u2019s motion for costs and attorney\u2019s fees in part and denying in part, Manglona awarded $110,625 in fees and $728.78 in costs to Kim\u2019s counsel, Colin M. Thompson.<\/p>\n
The judge also awarded $48,909.37 in fees and $2,528 in costs to Kim\u2019s other counsel, Robert T. Torres.<\/p>\n
Manglona said the RICO statute mandates treble damages to prevailing plaintiffs and that in this case Kim prevailed in each of her three RICO claims.<\/p>\n
The Quichochos, through counsel, argued, among other things, that a plaintiff may not recover twice for the same injury.<\/p>\n
Manglona disagreed. She ruled that prevailing RICO plaintiffs prove the exception, and defendants fail to provide any caselaw suggesting that treble damages in RICO actions are forbidden.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo the contrary, the treble damages rule is sound,\u201d the judge said, citing precedent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Disbarred lawyer Ramon K. Quichocho and his wife, Frances, have been found liable to pay…<\/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":[93,2441,259,862],"class_list":["post-194739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-district-court","tag-jung-ja-kim","tag-lawsuit","tag-rico"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194739","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=194739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194739\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}