Guam lawyer David J. Lujan does not want U.S. District Court for the NMI Magistrate Judge Heather L. Kennedy to serve as a settlement judge in Junior Larry Hillbroom\u2019s lawsuit against him and Vietnam-based lawyer Barry J. Israel.<\/p>\n
Lujan informed the District Court last week about his objection to Kennedy sitting as the settlement judge in Hillbroom\u2019s lawsuit.<\/p>\n
Lujan, who is representing himself in the case, did not cite any reason for his objection.<\/p>\n
The trial in this case will be on Nov. 19, 2019. A settlement conference is usually done to resolve a case through a non-trial disposition. <\/p>\n
Last month, Kennedy ordered Lujan to pay $20,921 in costs and fees to his former client, Hillbroom, for his behavior during his deposition in Guam.<\/p>\n
Kennedy said if Lujan had not walked out of his deposition, Hillbroom would have been able to complete the deposition and paid the corresponding costs to do so.<\/p>\n
Deposition refers to the taking testimony of a witness outside of court. Deposition was held in connection with Hillbroom\u2019s lawsuit against his former counsel, Lujan and Israel. <\/p>\n
According to court records, on May 14, 2019, Lujan walked out of the second day of his scheduled three-day deposition in Guam.<\/p>\n
That same day, Hillbroom filed a motion to compel Lujan to resume his deposition and pay sanctions.<\/p>\n
At the May 24 motion hearing, Kennedy granted the motion to compel and rescheduled the remaining two days of Lujan\u2019s deposition at the U.S. District Court on Saipan.<\/p>\n
The court also granted Hillbroom\u2019s motion for attorneys\u2019 fees and costs for the filing of the motion to compel and ordered Hillbroom to submit a more detailed accounting of deposition costs for sanctions. <\/p>\n
Hillbroom is suing Lujan and Israel for allegedly conspiring with former trustee Keith Waibel to inflate their contingency fee when the fortune of the late DHL co-founder Larry Hillblom was still undergoing proceedings in the Superior Court.<\/p>\n
Lujan and Israel denied the allegations.<\/p>\n
Hillbroom is one of the four DNA-proven children of Hillblom. His name is spelled differently from that of Hillblom.<\/p>\n
Hillblom died in a seaplane crash off Anatahan waters on a flight from Pagan Island to Saipan on May 21, 1995, leaving behind an estate worth approximately $550 million. The bodies of the pilot and a business partner were found, but Hillblom\u2019s body was never recovered.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Guam lawyer David J. Lujan does not want U.S. District Court for the NMI Magistrate…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":308642,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-308679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308679","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=308679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308679\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}