{"id":369184,"date":"2022-05-26T06:01:22","date_gmt":"2022-05-25T20:01:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=369184"},"modified":"2022-05-26T06:01:22","modified_gmt":"2022-05-25T20:01:22","slug":"ex-ipi-chair-ordered-to-pay-over-180k-attorneys-fees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/ex-ipi-chair-ordered-to-pay-over-180k-attorneys-fees\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-IPI chair ordered to pay over $180K attorneys\u2019 fees"},"content":{"rendered":"

The U.S. District Court for the NMI has ordered former Imperial Pacific International (CNMI) LLC chair Cui Lijie to pay over $180,000 in attorneys\u2019 fees and costs no later than June 21.<\/p>\n

According to an order by U.S. District Court for the NMI Chief Judge Ramona Manglona, the former IPI chairwoman must pay a total of $182,637 in attorneys\u2019 fees due to her \u201ccontinuous violation\u201d of the court\u2019s orders regarding the preservation of her Electronically Stored Information or ESI data.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cThe violations spanned for nearly a year\u2014from the court\u2019s initial preservation order issued on March 26, 2021, that was later amended, until [Cui\u2019s] purging of her contempt on March 10. As a result of Ms. Cui\u2019s consistent noncompliance with the court\u2019s numerous orders, the court awarded plaintiffs attorneys\u2019 fees and costs as part of civil contempt sanctions and permitted plaintiffs to submit fee petitions establishing their entitlement to the amount,\u201d the judge said. <\/p>\n

Manglona stated in her order that it is \u201cunfortunate that the process to obtain a clear explanation from Cui about her ESI data from her various devices and accounts spanned nearly a year and exhausted countless resources\u201d from plaintiffs, Cui, and the court.<\/p>\n

Previously, Manglona ordered Cui to pay a total of $42,200 for court-imposed sanctions that stemmed from court\u2019s repeatedly finding Cui to be not in compliance with a previous preservation order and contempt order regarding the ESI that she created or used, including emails, and ESI data sent or received by others on her behalf.<\/p>\n

Cui is a third-party witness in the lawsuit of seven construction workers against IPI and its former contractor and subcontractor, MCC International and Gold Mantis Construction Decoration, both of which have already settled with the plaintiffs. The lawsuit alleged forced labor and trafficking scheme.<\/p>\n

Aaron Halegua and Bruce Berline represented the plaintiffs: Tianming Wang, Dong Han, Yongjun Meng, Liangcai Sun, Youli Wang, Qingchun Xu, and Duxin Yan.<\/p>\n

Because the $5.4-million default judgment in favor of the plaintiffs against IPI remained unsatisfied, all ESI data held by the former IPI chairwoman remain relevant to the proceeding. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The U.S. District Court for the NMI has ordered former Imperial Pacific International (CNMI) LLC…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":369188,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-369184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369184","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=369184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369184\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/369188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}