U.S. District Court for the NMI designated Judge Frances M. Tydingco-Gatewood adopted Monday a magistrate judge\u2019s recommendation to enter a default judgment against the management of the defunct Tinian Dynasty Hotel and Casino in connection with the lawsuit filed against them by former foreign workers or CW-1 employees.<\/p>\n
Tydingco-Gatewood granted the workers\u2019 motion to strike the answers of Tinian Dynasty\u2019s owners and management\u2014Hong Kong Entertainment (Overseas) Investment Ltd. and Mega Stars Overseas Ltd.<\/p>\n
Tydingco-Gatewood pointed out that, in this case, there were no objections that were filed by any party to Magistrate Judge Heather L. Kennedy\u2019s recommendation.<\/p>\n
In her recommendation, Kennedy stated it is established that \u201ca corporation may appear in the federal courts only through licensed counsel.\u201d<\/p>\n
In this case, Kennedy said, the court informed Tinian Dynasty on several occasions after the withdrawal of their lawyers in 2016 and 2018 that they may face sanctions, including stricken answers and a default judgment, if they fail to obtain a new lawyer.<\/p>\n
\u201cYet no counsel has appeared to represent [Tinian Dynasty] since Jan. 16, 2018, when defendants\u2019 second counsel was permitted to withdraw from the case,\u201d Kennedy said.<\/p>\n
Therefore, she said, the court may strike HKE\u2019s and Mega Stars\u2019 answers and enter default based on their failure to defend and failure to comply with the court\u2019s orders to obtain a lawyer.<\/p>\n
Kennedy noted that the former workers\u2019 motion for default judgment does assert an amount for damages or include any evidence necessary for the court to determine the amount of damages for the entry of a final judgment.<\/p>\n
Samuel Mok is counsel for Eric F. Dona and six other co-plaintiffs. There are 15 named plaintiffs in this case.<\/p>\n
In their lawsuit, Dona and co-plaintiffs alleged that the owners and management of Tinian Dynasty lied to them about their immigration status.<\/p>\n
Mok alleged that the owners and management of Tinian Dynasty lied to the workers that they were legally authorized to work despite the denial of their CW-1 petitions.<\/p>\n
In this dispute, Kennedy said, the plaintiffs filed a complaint with claims of fraudulent concealment, negligent misrepresentation, constructive fraud, and wrongful termination, and seeks punitive damages.<\/p>\n
On April 27, 2018, the workers asked the court to strike the defendants\u2019 answers to the complaint and enter default judgment against HKE and Mega Stars in an amount of damages to be determined at a hearing.<\/p>\n
Last February, Chun Wai Chan, a corporate representative of both defendants, disclosed that the total outstanding liabilities of the owner of Tinian Dynasty has now climbed to over $250 million, excluding the $75 million in civil penalty assessed by the U.S. Department of the Treasury Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.<\/p>\n
Chan revealed that HKE\u2019s outstanding liabilities keeps increasing due to late payment penalties and interest.<\/p>\n
Chan said Tinian Dynasty\u2019s casino operation stopped in August 2015, and when the hotel operation halted in March 2016 and no income has been generated since then.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
U.S. District Court for the NMI designated Judge Frances M. Tydingco-Gatewood adopted Monday a magistrate…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[94],"tags":[8701,1628,259,11074],"class_list":["post-282272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-headlines","tag-chun-wai-chan","tag-hke","tag-lawsuit","tag-tinian-dynasty-hotel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282272","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=282272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282272\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}