{"id":333359,"date":"2020-11-13T06:00:09","date_gmt":"2020-11-12T20:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=333359"},"modified":"2020-11-13T06:00:09","modified_gmt":"2020-11-12T20:00:09","slug":"halegua-says-160-hourly-rate-reasonable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/halegua-says-160-hourly-rate-reasonable\/","title":{"rendered":"Halegua says $160 hourly rate reasonable"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Responding to Gold Mantis Construction Decoration (CNMI) LLC, which balked at the $160 hourly rate for legal interns, lawyer Aaron Halegua said that rate is reasonable because the legal interns have received some form of legal training.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_333360\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-333360\" style=\"width: 150px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Aaron-Halegua2-1-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-333360\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-333360\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Halegua<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>He explained that the higher rates make sense because summer law interns, unlike some paralegals, have received at least some formal legal training.<\/p>\n<p>He added that the attorney\u2019s fees being requested are reasonable and the work performed was not duplicative.<\/p>\n<p> \u201cGold Mantis does not provide any details as to how it arrived at the 25% figure, nor does it cite any case law or legal authority in support of this request,\u201d Halegua said.<\/p>\n<p>He said despite having access to the plaintiffs\u2019 motion to compel against IPI, and the corresponding fee petition and time sheets, Gold Mantis does not identify a single actual time entry or specific part of a brief that is arguably duplicative.<\/p>\n<p>Halegua said Gold Mantis\u2019 argument is unpersuasive.  <\/p>\n<p>In addition, Halegua also asked the court to award him additional fees for over five hours preparing for the reply brief.<\/p>\n<p>Halegua wants additional fees for preparing his reply to Gold Mantis\u2019 opposition to his clients\u2019 request for attorney\u2019s fees in the amount of $30,517.80.<\/p>\n<p>According to Saipan  Tribune archives, Halegua recently asked District Court for the NMI to award his clients attorney\u2019s fee in connection with their motion against Gold Mantis.<\/p>\n<p>Gold Mantis opposed the $160 hourly rate for two law student interns and wants the attorney\u2019s fees reduced by 25%.The request for attorney\u2019s fees includes Halegua\u2019s rate of $400 per hour; co-counsel Bruce Berline\u2019s $300 per hour; and the $160 per-hour rate for two law student interns who performed legal research and other work regarding the lawsuit.<\/p>\n<p>Halegua, who is from New York, represents seven construction workers who are suing Gold Mantis, MCC International Saipan Ltd. Co. and Imperial Pacific International, LLC over labor and other violations.<\/p>\n<p>The seven workers are Tianming Wang, Dong Han, Yongjun Meng, Liangcai Sun, Youli Wang, Qingchun Xu, and Duxin Yan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Responding to Gold Mantis Construction Decoration (CNMI) LLC, which balked at the $160 hourly rate&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":331088,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-333359","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\/333359","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=333359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333359\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/331088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}