DOJ and FBI settle lawsuit for $554.80

The U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have agreed to pay $554.80 to Jin Dong Wang to settle his lawsuit over the FBI’s alleged withholding of investigation records into his beating by a police officer.

Wang, through counsel David G. Banes, and assistant U.S. attorney Mikel W. Schwab as counsel for the U.S. government jointly asked the U.S. District Court for the NMI on Monday to dismiss the case.

Banes and Schwab said each party shall bear its own costs and fees, including attorneys’ fees. They asked the court to retain jurisdiction to enforce the settlement.

U.S. District Court for the NMI Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona dismissed the case on Tuesday.

The settlement is not to be construed as an admission of any liability or fault of the United States.

Wang agreed that the settlement “is solely the compromise of any past, present, future, and potential contested claims for the purpose of avoiding further controversy and litigation pertaining to the covered conduct.”

Under the settlement deal, once the U.S. pays the settlement amount, Wang will release the U.S. from any civil or administrative monetary claims.

In Wang’s complaint filed in federal court in August 2013, Banes said the DOJ and FBI illegally withheld investigation records into Wang’s beating by police officer Jesse Dubrall during a botched drug raid at his house in As Lito, Saipan on Oct. 18, 2010.

Wang sued under the Freedom of Information Act to compel DOJ and the FBI to release these agency records that were allegedly withheld from him. Those records relate to the FBI’s investigation of the incident.

Banes asked the court to declare that failure to release the records as unlawful.

In October 2013, the U.S. government disputed Wang’s complaint and denied any liability or any wrongdoing whatsoever.

Banes and Schwab agreed that this settlement agreement is “neither an admission of liability of the United States nor a concession by the United States that its claims are not well founded.”

The CNMI government, the Department of Public Safety, and police officer Dubrall settled Wang’s police brutality lawsuit in November 2013.

That settlement includes a series of cash payments to Wang and five years of medical treatment at the Commonwealth Health Center for the injuries he sustained during the incident.

Without disclosing the amount in the settlement, Banes said the CNMI government will shoulder the cash payments.

Wang filed the police brutality lawsuit over the injuries that he suffered when police officers wrongfully seized him at his house in As Lito on Oct. 18, 2010, mistaking him for another drug suspect they were looking for. Dubrall allegedly used excessive force, beating Wang savagely and hitting his head with a gun’s butt during the botched operation.

Wang was hospitalized for serious injuries in the head, abdomen, buttocks, and legs.

Vicente B. Babauta, a former police officer and now an investigator at the Office of the Attorney General, later concluded in his investigation that Dubrall acted appropriately during that operation and determined that Wang’s allegation of brutality was unsubstantiated.