The Commonwealth Utilities Corp. is seeking a new attorney to represent the corporation in various litigations and provide other legal services.<\/p>\n
This came after CUC\u2019s former legal counsel, Brian Sers Nicolas, expressed disinterest in renewing his contract for another year. CUC\u2019s offer to Sers Nicolas for the contract renewal cut the retainer\u2019s fee from $9,000 to $7,000 a month.<\/p>\n
\u201cCUC is seeking the services of an attorney [or law firm] to provide representation and other legal services to the corporation,\u201d CUC said in a request for proposals. \u201cThe attorney [or firm] would advise the board of directors as requested and CUC would refer a broad range of legal work, including contract, environmental, employment, tort, and administrative law matters.\u201d<\/p>\n
CUC put out the RFP on Sept. 23, and is giving interested parties until this Friday to submit their proposals.<\/p>\n
Officials maintained that a speedy procurement was necessary, noting that CUC is currently involved in at least seven pending litigations. Sers Nicolas\u2019 contract expired on August 31.<\/p>\n
CUC had wanted to renew Sers Nicolas\u2019 contract, but on the condition that his retainer fee would be cut by $2,000.<\/p>\n
Under the recently expired contract, Sers Nicholas got a fixed monthly retainer fee of $9,000 for the first 36 hours of work he performed for CUC. He was also paid an hourly rate of about $225 to $250 for work done beyond the initial 36 hours.<\/p>\n
But in its Aug. 31 meeting, the CUC board of directors decided as part of its cost-cutting measures to reduce the retainer fee to $7,0000 for the same number of work hours. This brings the lawyer\u2019s rate to about $194 an hour.<\/p>\n
Sers Nicolas actually used to receive $180,000 annually, or $15,000 monthly, in retainer fee.<\/p>\n
In February 2003, the CUC board lowered it to $60,000 for 20 hours of work per month. The board, then chaired by Francisco Q. Guerrero, had noted that a $5,000 monthly retainer fee was \u201cjust right.\u201d The board used to pay Sers Nicolas and his then partner Robert Torres $10,000 a month before the latter\u2019s appointment to the Attorney General’s Office in early 2002. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Commonwealth Utilities Corp. is seeking a new attorney to represent the corporation in various litigations and provide other legal services.<\/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-84531","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\/84531","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=84531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84531\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}