U.S. District Court of Guam Magistrate Judge Joaquin V. E. Manibusan Jr. has been designated as a settlement judge in the lawsuit filed by Jesus I. Taisague, who questioned the constitutionality of the settlement agreement in Betty Johnson\u2019s class action against the Retirement Fund. <\/p>\n
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit Chief Judge Sidney R. Thomas made the designation last week. U.S. District Court of Guam Chief Judge Frances Tydingco-Gatewood, who presides over Johnson\u2019s lawsuit, concurred with the designation.<\/p>\n
Tydingco-Gatewood handled Johnson\u2019s lawsuit after U.S. District Court for the NMI Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona recused herself from the case. The class action resulted in a settlement. <\/p>\n
Manglona and Tydingco-Gatewood recently assigned Taisague\u2019s case to a magistrate judge in Guam.<\/p>\n
Manglona and Tydingco-Gatewood both agreed that a judge from Guam shall be assigned to handle Taisague\u2019s lawsuit and to perform settlement duties in the case.<\/p>\n
Manglona and Tydingco-Gatewood have determined that recusal of all local federal judges from Taisague\u2019s case has created an \u201cemergency,\u201d requiring the temporary assignment of a judge from Guam.<\/p>\n
Taisague filed the lawsuit in 2013 against then-governor Eloy S. Inos, the CNMI government, Department of Finance, and the Retirement Fund for entering into a settlement agreement with Johnson that, according to him, is unconstitutional and illegal.<\/p>\n
Taisague filed the case through counsel Ramon Quichocho, who is now disbarred. Taisague was among the 16 persons who opted out of the Johnson settlement agreement. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
U.S. District Court of Guam Magistrate Judge Joaquin V. E. Manibusan Jr. has been designated…<\/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":[93,51,259,134],"class_list":["post-272912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-district-court","tag-guam","tag-lawsuit","tag-retirement-fund"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272912","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=272912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272912\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}