U.S. District Court for the NMI designated judge Frances Tydingco-Gatewood has given the CNMI government and Betty Johnson\u2019s counsels\u2014Hawaii-based Bronster Hoshibata and Calif.-based lawyer Timothy Lord\u2014until Friday, April 25, to resolve the issue on attorney\u2019s fees and costs.<\/p>\n
If no resolution is reached by Friday, then Tydingco-Gatewood will decide on the lawyers\u2019 pending applications for attorney\u2019s fees and costs.<\/p>\n
In her order last week, the judge disclosed that she held a teleconference with Gov. Eloy S. Inos, Attorney General Joey P. San Nicolas, assistant attorney general Teresita Sablan, attorney Margery Bronster, attorney Robert Hatch, and Lord on April 11, 2014.<\/p>\n
Bronster and Hatch are both from Hoshibata Bronster law firm.<\/p>\n
Tydingco-Gatewood said she inquired whether the parties were still willing to participate in settlement discussions with Hawaii chief bankruptcy judge Robert Faris on the pending applications for attorney\u2019s fees.<\/p>\n
All parties reportedly expressed a desire to continue talks with Faris. While she is pleased about this, Tydingco-Gatewood advised them that she will issue her decision if no resolution is reached by Friday. <\/p>\n
Bronster Hoshibata is demanding $17.5 million. Lord\u2019s initial demand was either $3.6 million or $5.9 million. The judge placed their petitions under advisement. <\/p>\n
Johnson\u2019s original counsel, Bruce Lee Jorgensen, initially requested at least $18.6 million, but he settled with the government for $800,000. Johnson\u2019s local counsel, Stephen Woodruff, asked between $1 million and $2.9 million, but he settled with the government for $185,000.<\/p>\n
Last March 3, Tydingco-Gatewood approved the CNMI government\u2019s settlement with Woodruff, and placed under advisement the CNMI government\u2019s settlement with Jorgensen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
U.S. District Court for the NMI designated judge Frances Tydingco-Gatewood has given the CNMI government…<\/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":[26,93],"class_list":["post-32920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-cnmi","tag-district-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32920","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=32920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32920\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}