U.S. District Court for the NMI designated judge Frances Tydingco-Gatewood has ordered the Settlement Fund to pay its trustee, Joyce C.H. Tang, $25,634.25 for professional services and expenses incurred in January and February 2014.
\nAs this developed, Tydingco-Gatewood held a status conference via telephone yesterday about the status of settlement negotiations between the CNMI government and Betty Johnson\u2019s counsels pertaining to their petitions for attorney\u2019s fees and costs. The judge will hold another status conference on May 5, 2014.<\/p>\n
In her order for payment of Tang\u2019s invoices, Tydingco-Gatewood said the $25,634.25 represents 90 percent of professional fees and 100 percent of all expenses incurred in January and February 2014.<\/p>\n
The judge further ordered the Settlement Fund to hold in trust to the credit of the trustee $2,848, which represents 10 percent of the trustee\u2019s professional fees for this time period.<\/p>\n
Tang requested for compensation in the amounts of $16,582.50 and $11,900 in professional services, for a total of $28,482.50, for the months of January and February 2014 respectively.<\/p>\n
Tang also asked for compensation in the amounts of $1,263.07 and $461.29 in expenses, for a total of $1,724.36, for January and February 2014 respectively.<\/p>\n
Tang\u2019s total request for payments of professional services and expenses is $30,206.86.<\/p>\n
In her order, Tydingco-Gatewood said she has reviewed the invoices and finds the request for compensation and reimbursement of expenses to be reasonable.<\/p>\n
Tydingco-Gatewood said she is satisfied with the work performed by Tang.<\/p>\n
The trustee, the judge noted, worked to finalize contracts for the services of an investment consultant and a software program capable of calculating members\u2019 benefits and auditing members\u2019 accounts.<\/p>\n
Tang, she added, continued to work with CNMI government officials to resolve outstanding employer contributions issues, reviewed the status of pending administrative appeals, drafted rules and regulations to govern the procedure for administrative appeals, and drafted her first quarterly report.<\/p>\n
Finally, Tydingco-Gatewood said the trustee continued to assist in the Merrill Lynch class action.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, at a status conference yesterday, Tydingco-Gatewood instructed attorney Mitchell F. Thompson, counsel for Johnson\u2019s original lawyer, Bruce Lee Jorgensen, and Johnson\u2019s other counsel, Timothy R. Lord, to work together regarding their petitions for attorney\u2019s fees and costs.<\/p>\n
Tydingco-Gatewood placed under advisement the separate petitions filed by Jorgensen and Lord. The CNMI government agreed to settle Jorgensen\u2019s fees for $800,000, subject to court\u2019s approval.<\/p>\n
The judge also instructed assistant attorney general Reena Patel to submit the CNMI government\u2019s proposed order regarding Stephen Woodruff\u2019s petition for attorney\u2019s fees and costs that the government settled for $185,000. Woodruff was Johnson\u2019s local counsel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
U.S. District Court for the NMI designated judge Frances Tydingco-Gatewood has ordered the Settlement Fund…<\/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":[26,93,733],"class_list":["post-33563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-cnmi","tag-district-court","tag-settlement-fund"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33563","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=33563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33563\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}