On Dec. 23, 2016, the Supreme Court issued its opinion in Kalayaan, Inc. v. Chris G. Imbo, 2016 MP 16, granting Chris G. Imbo\u2019s motion to dismiss Kalayaan, Inc.\u2019s appeal. <\/p>\n
In 2014, Kalayaan filed a complaint against Imbo for a breach of contract. Five-hundred and eighty-three days later, Kalayaan served Imbo the summons and complaint. Relying on NMI Rule of Civil Procedure 4(m), Imbo moved to dismiss the complaint for failure to timely serve, and his motion was granted by the trial court. Kalayaan appealed the dismissal, arguing that the trial court misapplied Rule 4(m), and refiled the complaint in the trial court. <\/p>\n
Imbo moved to dismiss Kalayaan\u2019s appeal, arguing that the Supreme Court lacked jurisdiction because the trial court\u2019s order was not a final order, and because Kalayaan\u2019s appeal was mooted because the original complaint was refiled in the trial court. <\/p>\n
Because the trial court relied on Rule 4(m) and dismissed the action, not merely the complaint, the Supreme Court found that the trial court\u2019s order was a final order and the high court did have jurisdiction to hear Kalayaan\u2019s appeal. However, because Kalayaan refiled the same complaint in the trial court, the Supreme Court determined that the issue was moot on appeal, noting a finding in favor of Kalayaan would \u201cput Kalayaan where it stands now, with an exact duplicate of the case and complaint already proceeding in trial court.\u201d To do so, the high court found, would \u201cbe nonsensical.\u201d The high court thus granted Imbo\u2019s motion to dismiss on the grounds of mootness. <\/p>\n
The Supreme Court\u2019s full opinion is available at http:\/\/www.cnmilaw.org\/supreme16.html. (NMI Judiciary)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On Dec. 23, 2016, the Supreme Court issued its opinion in Kalayaan, Inc. v. Chris…<\/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":[292,139],"class_list":["post-243288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-mp","tag-supreme-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243288","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=243288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243288\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}