Saying he was acting then as a Rota senator, Lt. Gov. Victor B. Hocog insists he is immune to the lawsuit filed by Japanese investor Takahisa Yamamoto against him and the owners of cargo ship M\/V Luta.<\/p>\n
In his response to Yamamoto\u2019s lawsuit, Hocog claimed legislative immunity, saying the actions alleged were undertaken in his capacity as senator.<\/p>\n
In Hocog\u2019s two-page answer, his lawyer, F. Randall Cunliffe, asked the U.S. District Court for the NMI to dismiss the case in its entirety.<\/p>\n
Cunliffe also argued that the complaint does not identify claims that give the federal court jurisdiction over them. The lawyer also denied other allegations in the lawsuit.<\/p>\n
Last month, U.S. District Court for the NMI Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona denied Hocog\u2019s motion to dismiss Yamamoto\u2019s first amended complaint against him and owners of M\/V Luta. <\/p>\n
Manglona said that Hocog\u2019s second motion to dismiss raises defenses that were available to him when he filed his first motion to dismiss.<\/p>\n
On Oct. 25, 2016, Yamamoto sued M\/V Luta, Luta Mermaid LLC and six other defendants, including Hocog, alleging beach of contract and fraud.<\/p>\n
On Nov. 17, 2016, Hocog filed a motion to dismiss Yamamoto\u2019s complaint for failure to plead sufficient facts to sustain a claim of fraud.<\/p>\n
In response, on Dec. 1, 2016, Yamamoto amended his complaint. The court then determined that Hocog\u2019s motion to dismiss was moot.<\/p>\n
Within hours of the court\u2019s order, Hocog filed another motion to dismiss the first amended complaint. He asserted that the first amended complaint was not verified.<\/p>\n
On March 7, 2017, the court denied the motion to dismiss the first amended complaint.<\/p>\n
Last March 22, Hocog filed the motion to dismiss to first amended complaint.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Saying he was acting then as a Rota senator, Lt. Gov. Victor B. Hocog insists…<\/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":[93,259,16108,3482],"class_list":["post-251469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-district-court","tag-lawsuit","tag-randall-cunliffe","tag-takahisa-yamamoto"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251469","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=251469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251469\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}