‘OAG has marching orders to avoid govt from paying victims’

Attorneys of the Office of the Attorney General have marching orders not to do justice, but to help the CNMI government to avoid paying any claims from victims of medical malpractice, according to former Saipan representative Ana S. Teregeyo.

Teregeyo said the attorneys who have taken medical malpractice cases in the past have to front the money for medical experts and then defend against the salaried lawyers of the OAG.

Teregeyo said until just recently, the Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. or the CNMI has refused to pay the judgments that the few victims who have sued were able to obtain.

The result, she said, is private attorneys in the CNMI all turn down plaintiffs who have been injured at the Commonwealth Health Center.

The former lawmaker expressed how difficult it is to proceed with her lawsuit against the government without a lawyer in her response to the Commonwealth’s motion to dismiss her case.

Teregeyo is suing the CNMI government for negligence arising from the same allegations in her 2nd Amended complaint when her left knee and leg became infected, necessitating five more surgeries and an artificial knee replacement.

The government, through OAG, asked the Superior Court to dismiss her complaint.

In response to the motion, Teregeyo said she is one such plaintiff who has had to proceed pro se because no attorney will take her case for economic reasons.

Teregeyo said acting by herself and with limited assistance from attorneys, she has tried her best to serve the government. She said she should be allowed greater latitude to correct the deficiencies in service of process.

Teregeyo said the CNMI can be sued for medical malpractice conducted by CHCC. She added that her claims are not barred by the statute of limitations.

She said she sent the government the complaint before she filed it with the court in anticipation of a response from the OAG to her claim within 90 days.

Teregeyo said after all, the government had insisted that her first complaint should be dismissed for not giving the Attorney General 90 days to consider accepting the claim.

She said the AG just ignored her claim.

Teregeyo said she did not serve process on directly on the OAG because she did not understand that that was required.

Teregeyo said she believes in good faith that the government had already been served with the letter dated Feb. 5, 2016.

She said knowing that the attorney for CHCC was an assistant attorney general, and that CHCC is part of the CNMI, she thought she was serving the party who needed to be served.

Teregeyo said considering that she is a pro se litigant and the service of process is a technical requirement that is not familiar with her, she requests the court for additional time to perfect any defects in the service of process.

She said based on the status conference on Jan. 12, 2016, she understood she should sue the government instead of CHCC and therefore, she amended the complaint and named the Commonwealth as the defendant.

Teregeyo said she promptly filed the action against the government in accordance with the statute of limitations.

She said even if she should amend the complaint and rename the defendant, the amendment should relate back to the promptly filed pleading without being barred by the statute of limitation.

She said CNMI law imposed a two-year statute of limitation on medical malpractice suits.

However, she said, the statute language “does not unambiguously point to either the occurrence date or the discovery date as the moment when a cause of action accrues.”

She said she promptly filed the complaint against the government on May 9, 2016.

She said the CNMI was actually on notice of the claim on Oct. 26, 2015 when the first complaint was filed.

Teregeyo alleged that as a result of gross negligence she almost lost her leg. She claimed that only because she had the means to go off-island and obtain professional care that her leg was saved.

The former lawmaker said what happened to her at CHC should never happen to anyone.

In the government’s motion to dismiss, OAG Civil Division chief Christopher M. Timmons said the complaint should be dismissed for insufficiency of service or process.

Timmons said Teregeyo failed to properly serve the Commonwealth pursuant to Rule 4 of the Commonwealth Rules of Civil Procedure.

Accordingly, he said, default is improper and Teregeyo’s claims instead must be dismissed for insufficiency of service of process.

Teregeyo named the CNMI as the only defendant in her new complaint that she filed in the Superior Court in May 2016 pro se or without a lawyer.