U.S. District Court for the NMI designated judge Frances M. Tydingco-Gatewood approved yesterday the CNMI government\u2019s final draft of the settlement deal with Betty Johnson\u2019s local counsel, Stephen C. Woodruff, for his $185,000 attorney\u2019s fees.
\nTydingco-Gatewood said she read and considered the stipulated motion filed by the CNMI government and Woodruff to approve the settlement, the settlement agreement, as well as all arguments and submissions from the parties at the hearings.<\/p>\n
Tydingco-Gatewood approved the payment of $185,000 to Woodruff during a hearing on March 3, 2014, and ordered the parties to file a final draft of their settlement deal no later than March 7, 2014.<\/p>\n
The CNMI government and Woodruff filed the final draft of the settlement on March 7, 2014.<\/p>\n
According to the deal, the CNMI shall pay Woodruff $185,000 on or before Friday, May 2, 2014, \u201cin full satisfaction of its obligation to pay to Woodruff attorney\u2019s fees and reimbursement of costs\u201d under the settlement agreement in Johnson\u2019s class action.<\/p>\n
Woodruff\u2019s initial request was between $1 million to $2.9 million.<\/p>\n
The CNMI government also settled with Johnson\u2019s original counsel, Bruce Lee Jorgensen, for $800,000. Tydingco-Gatewood placed the deal under advisement. Jorgensen\u2019s initial demand for payment was at least $18.6 million.<\/p>\n
The judge also placed under advisement, the petitions for attorney\u2019s fees and costs filed by Johnson\u2019s other counsels: Bronster Hoshibata and Timothy Lord.<\/p>\n
The Hawaii-based Hoshibata is seeking $17.5 million, while the San Rafael, California-based Lord is demanding either $3.6 million or $5.9 million.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
U.S. District Court for the NMI designated judge Frances M. Tydingco-Gatewood approved yesterday the CNMI…<\/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-33675","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\/33675","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=33675"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33675\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}