The U.S. District Court for the NMI has granted Imperial Pacific International (CNMI) LLC\u2019s request for another extension to pay the attorney\u2019s fees in the lawsuit filed by seven construction workers over labor complaints and other allegations.<\/p>\n
District Court for the NMI Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona granted IPI\u2019s request for a 30-day extension to pay the attorney\u2019s fees in the amount of $93,834.25. Manglona also ordered IPI to make interim payment to the plaintiffs\u2019 lawyers as soon as funds are available. <\/p>\n
IPI was ordered to pay the full amount of the plaintiffs\u2019 lawyers\u2019 fees by Oct. 24. Manglona added in her ruling that this is the only instance the court will grant IPI an extension to pay.<\/p>\n
Manglona also notified IPI of the possibility of liquidating some of its assets or direct available cash flow to satisfy court orders rather than paying other expenses.<\/p>\n
Michael Dotts, who serves as IPI\u2019s counsel, said that, as of the Sept. 24 deadline, IPI had no funds and no financial capacity to a make a payment However, he assured the court that funding will be available within 30 to 60 days.<\/p>\n
Donald Browne, IPI chief executive officer, said in a declaration to support Dotts\u2019 request that IPI has sources of funds outside of the CNMI and receives funding on a sporadic basis. IPI expects to have funds available to cover the liability in 30 to 60 days.<\/p>\n
Browne said that the COVID-19 pandemic negatively impacted IPI\u2019s business starting in December 2019 and forced IPI\u2019s business to close entirely on March 17, 2020.<\/p>\n
Browne added that IPI is still prohibited to reopen and, even if allowed to reopen, there are no tourists coming and the tourism market is not expected to recover until May 2021 at the earliest. <\/p>\n
The request for an extension comes following Manglona\u2019s recent denial of IPI\u2019s request to suspend court proceedings in the lawsuit filed by Tianming Wang, Dong Han, Yongjun Meng, Liangcai Sun, Youli Wang, Qingchun Xu, and Duxin Yan. The seven construction workers are represented by attorneys Aaron Halegua and Bruce Berline and they have asked the court to issue an order awarding them $3.86 million in compensatory damages and $7.72 million in punitive damages.<\/p>\n
The plaintiffs worked for IPI\u2019s former contractor and subcontractor: MCC International Saipan Ltd. Co. and Gold Mantis Construction Decoration (CNMI).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The U.S. District Court for the NMI has granted Imperial Pacific International (CNMI) LLC\u2019s request…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-330896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330896","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\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=330896"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330896\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}