The federal court has sanctioned Junior Larry Hillbroom for failing to attend a settlement conference in connection with his lawsuit against his two former lawyers.<\/p>\n
U.S. District Court for the NMI Magistrate Judge Heather L. Kennedy found Friday that there were no sufficient reasons provided for Hillbroom\u2019s failure to appear.<\/p>\n
Kennedy ordered Hillbroom to pay reasonable costs to his former lawyers, David J. Lujan and Barry J. Israel, for their travel expenses to attend the settlement conference.<\/p>\n
Kennedy, however, denied Lujan\u2019s and Israel\u2019s request to hold Hillbroom liable to pay for their attorney\u2019s fees.<\/p>\n
At the hearing, attorney Mark Hanson appeared on behalf of his client, Hillbroom.<\/p>\n
He explained that he was able to speak with Hillbroom and that the latter twice attempted to travel to Saipan but had to return back to Palau due to flight problems.<\/p>\n
Kennedy asked Hanson if he has any documentation regarding both flights. Hanson stated he did not have time to obtain any documentation.<\/p>\n
Attorney Victorino Torres appeared on behalf of Lujan and Israel.<\/p>\n
Torres stated that Israel had travelled all the way from Vietnam and Lujan had to postpone a trial in Guam just to be present for the settlement conference.<\/p>\n
Torres asked the court to award his clients costs and attorney\u2019s fees.<\/p>\n
Kennedy ordered Hillbroom to appear for Friday\u2019s hearing to explain why he should not be sanctioned for not showing up at the settlement conference last Sept. 14.<\/p>\n
The conference was set in connection with Hillbroom\u2019s lawsuit against his previous lawyers, Lujan and Israel, for allegedly conspiring with a former trustee to inflate the attorney\u2019s contingency fee when late business tycoon Larry Hillblom\u2019s fortune was still undergoing probate proceedings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The federal court has sanctioned Junior Larry Hillbroom for failing to attend a settlement conference…<\/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":[583,259,5217,122],"class_list":["post-210875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-israel","tag-lawsuit","tag-mark-hanson","tag-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210875","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=210875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210875\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}