MPLA: Seeking judge’s disqualification is no desperate act

Marianas Public Lands Authority board chair Ana Demapan-Castro and the agency’s directors are insisting that it is only proper to disqualify Superior Court judge Kenneth Govendo from handling the lawsuit filed by former commissioner Henry Hofschneider for alleged unlawful termination.

MPLA attorney Matthew Gregory said his request to disqualify Govendo is not a desperate move, reacting to statements from Hofschneider’s camp.

Hofschneider’s attorney, Sean Frink, said the move to disqualify Govendo is suspicious due to its timing, when the judge was scheduled last week to hear the arguments related to the former MPLA commissioner’s claims. He said the MPLA’s move was a “desperate” measure, which may delay the proceeding.

“Calling it desperate is self-serving and untrue,” Gregory said. He said he only obtained last March 18 copies of Govendo’s purported letters to a newspaper in 2002, which allegedly showed the judge’s bias against the MPLA and against boards of public corporations that terminate employment of workers and executive directors.

At the time Govendo purportedly wrote the letters, he had not been appointed Superior Court judge yet. Govendo only sat on the Superior Court’s bench starting June 2003.

But Gregory said that Govendo had represented a party as lawyer in a 1992 lawsuit against MPLA’s predecessor agency. He said one of those letters purportedly by Govendo had assailed the MPLA for cheaply leasing out public land to hotels and golf courses and for putting the proceeds in a non-insured bank.

In another published letter in 2002, Govendo allegedly tackled the termination of employees at the Northern Marianas College, wherein he cautioned those who are in positions to terminate jobs to have a “thought process…so as to make the trauma and transition as painless as possible for the employee.”

Another letter purportedly written by Govendo before he became judge focused on the issue of termination of executive directors. “Even if policy permits otherwise, a smart lawyer would argue strongly that you don’t terminate high profile executive directors without reasons, and those reasons should be made public.”

Hofschneider’s lawsuit against Demapan-Castro and the MPLA board seeks monetary compensation and punitive damages of at least $1.75 million.

Hofschneider is asking the court to declare Demapan-Castro’s actions that suspended and eventually terminated him from the MPLA’s top executive post as illegal and thus, null and void.

Hofschneider impleaded the MPLA board as co-defendant in the Superior Court action, saying it has allowed Demapan-Castro to continue using MPLA funds in her personal vendetta against him in the form of legal defense fees and costs, despite the alleged illegality of the MPLA chair’s actions.