U.S. District Court for the NMI Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona has recused herself from hearing Stephen C. Woodruff\u2019s request for the federal court to decline imposing on him the local courts\u2019 order disbarring him from the practice of law in the CNMI.<\/p>\n
In an order on Monday, Manglona said her husband, John A. Manglona, is a justice of the CNMI Supreme Court and sat on the panel that decided Woodruff\u2019s appeal.<\/p>\n
Manglona said the federal judge who hears Woodruff\u2019s motion will decide whether to impose on Woodruff the same disbarment order imposed by the CNMI Supreme Court. This process is called \u201creciprocal discipline.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIn order to avoid a reasonable appearance of partiality, I must recuse myself in this matter,\u201d Manglona said.<\/p>\n
She directed the federal court\u2019s clerk to reassign the case to a designated judge or refer the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit for reassignment.<\/p>\n
Superior Court Associate Judge David A. Wiseman ordered Woodruff\u2019s disbarment in June 2013 for 44 violations of the Model Rules of Professional Conduct. Woodruff appealed, asking the CNMI Supreme Court to reverse Wiseman\u2019s order. The CNMI Supreme Court affirmed Wiseman\u2019s order last week.<\/p>\n
On Monday, Woodruff informed the federal court about the CNMI high court\u2019s decision. He also filed a motion, requesting the federal court to enter an order declining to impose reciprocal discipline.<\/p>\n
In his motion, Woodruff said if the question of reciprocal discipline is not now decided in his favor, he suggests that proceedings in federal court be stayed for 120 days in order to allow him to seek rehearing in the CNMI Supreme Court or review in the U.S. Supreme Court.<\/p>\n
Woodruff said justice pro tem Herbert Soll, who issued a dissenting opinion, was concerned about the \u201cdrastic\u201d consequences of affirming the Superior Court\u2019s default disbarment order \u201cbased on unproven allegations.\u201d<\/p>\n
Woodruff said it is uncontroverted that there was absolutely no proof by disciplinary counsel of anything at all in the Superior Court proceedings.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was nothing but representations of disciplinary counsel, who was ultimately disqualified from prosecuting the case,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Woodruff said reciprocal discipline is appropriate only where the discipline imposed is supported by evidence sufficient to satisfy the duty of the court to exercise the care due such questions.<\/p>\n
\u201cSince there was no actual evidence at all of misconduct in the Superior Court, there was insufficient proof of misconduct, and reciprocal discipline should be declined,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Woodruff said imposition of reciprocal discipline would impose a grave injustice on him.<\/p>\n
He cited Soll\u2019s statement in his dissent that \u201cdisbarment is a drastic remedy that deprives attorneys of their livelihood.\u201d<\/p>\n
Woodruff said he has been unable to practice in CNMI courts for more than three years now since interim suspension was imposed in 2013.<\/p>\n
He cited another Soll statement that \u201cassuming the truth of the allegations, which generally regard an inattention to his legal practice, Woodruff may be deserving of an opportunity to rehabilitate himself.\u201d<\/p>\n
Woodruff said reciprocal discipline would deny him the ability to demonstrate that whatever problems may have existed in his practice previously have been corrected.<\/p>\n
He said there were many due process violations in the CNMI Bar Disciplinary Committee and Commonwealth courts relative the disciplinary proceedings against him.<\/p>\n
He believes that the CNMI Supreme Court deprived him of due process of law when it arbitrarily struck 38 percent of his brief, including 74 percent of his argument.<\/p>\n
Woodruff also believes he was denied due process when procedural motions he brought\u2014of a type regularly granted in the ordinary case\u2014were denied.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
U.S. District Court for the NMI Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona has recused herself from…<\/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":[26,8707,5631,88],"class_list":["post-216722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-cnmi","tag-herbert-soll","tag-model-rules","tag-superior-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216722","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=216722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216722\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}