Saying the case was barred by the two-year statute of limitation period, Superior Court Judge Juan T. Lizama dismissed on Friday a civil lawsuit brought against the government and an immigration officer by an alien worker who was raped by an immigration officer in 1996.<\/p>\n
Lawyer Joe Hill filed the civil action on behalf of Zhang Gui Juan following the conviction of her assailant, who was criminally charged and convicted of rape.<\/p>\n
Also named defendant in the civil action aside from the CNMI government, was the convict’s immediate superior Tricia Aguon.<\/p>\n
Zhang said the defendants were negligent of their duty to guard and protect her while she was in the custody of immigration agents.<\/p>\n
Zhang originally filed the civil action in the US District in March 1998.<\/p>\n
In a Nov. 14, 1998 decision, the federal court dismissed the case saying it was a “novel and complex issue” that should be addressed by the local court.<\/p>\n
Zhang therefore moved the case to the local court in March of this year.<\/p>\n
In dismissing the case, Lizama said the case was filed beyond the statute of limitation period as the rape incident took place in November 1996 while she was in detention.<\/p>\n
Lizama said that since Zhang was released on Jan. 23, 1997, she had until Jan. 23, 1999 to file the complaint.<\/p>\n
Zhang could have promptly transferred the case to the local court 30 days after the federal court dismissed her case, Lizama said. (MCM)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Saying the case was barred by the two-year statute of limitation period, Superior Court Judge Juan T. Lizama dismissed on Friday a civil lawsuit brought against the government and an immigration officer by an alien worker who was raped by an immigration officer in 1996.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48242","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\/48242","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48242\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}