\n\t\t\t\tBerline\n\t\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\nThe seven plaintiffs, through counsel Aaron Halegua and Bruce Berline, said that IPI violated the U.S. District Court for the NMI\u2019s initial order to produce all discovery materials by Jan. 13, 2020. Halegua and Berline said that IPI now also violated the stipulation ordered by the court requiring it to produce all discovery materials by Feb. 24, 2020.<\/p>\n
As of press time yesterday, Saipan Tribune was still awaiting comments from IPI.<\/p>\n
The lawyers asked the court to treat IPI\u2019s failure to obey the orders as contempt of court and for it to impose a civil contempt sanction of $5,000 per day. Halegua and Berline also asked the court to instruct IPI that any further noncompliance with its discovery obligations will result in harsher sanctions such as striking its pleadings or entering a default judgment.<\/p>\n
They asked the court to award plaintiffs\u2019 attorneys\u2019 fees in connection with IPI\u2019s disobedience of the court\u2019s prior discovery orders.<\/p>\n
Halegua and Berline said the plaintiffs are sympathetic to IPI counsel\u2019s recent personal issues but that does not excuse IPI\u2019s consistent violations of court orders over the course of many months.<\/p>\n
Last December, the plaintiffs requested the court to award them $31,801 in attorneys\u2019 fees and $156 in costs in connection with their motion to compel. The issue is pending in court. <\/p>\n
At a hearing last Dec. 12, U.S. District Court for the NMI Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona granted the former workers\u2019 counter-motion to compel IPI to respond to their discovery requests. Manglona ordered IPI to respond to all discovery requests.<\/p>\n
The judge also granted the workers\u2019 motion to sanction IPI and ordered the company to pay attorneys\u2019 fees to the plaintiffs\/workers for bringing the motion to compel.<\/p>\n
The plaintiffs\u2014Tianming Wang, Dong Han, Yongjun Meng, Liangcai Sun, Youli Wang, Quingchun Xu, and Xiyang Du\u2014are suing IPI, MCC International Saipan Ltd. Co., and MCC\u2019s subcontractor, Gold Mantis Construction Decoration (CNMI) LLC. <\/p>\n
The plaintiffs, who are all Chinese nationals, are suing the defendants for alleged forced labor in violation of the Trafficking Victims Protection Re-authorization Act, forced labor in violation of the CNMI Anti-Trafficking Act, negligence, and liability for employees of subcontractor.<\/p>\n
The workers alleged, among other things, that they were forced to work long hours for below minimum wage under extremely dangerous conditions at the casino-resort worksite.<\/p>\n
IPI said any wage claims by the plaintiffs are barred because they voluntarily illegally entered the CNMI to work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The seven men who are suing their former employer, Imperial Pacific International (CNMI) LLC, and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":308944,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[12497],"class_list":["post-319171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","tag-ipi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319171","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=319171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319171\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}