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Govt settles with woman suing DPS, cops
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Posted on Dec 22 2011
By Ferdie de la Torre
Reporter
Reporter
A lawyer disclosed yesterday that a government lawyer has already handed a settlement check to a Korean woman who had sued the Department of Public Safety and some police officers whom she had accused of conspiring to destroy evidence to prevent the prosecution of a drunk motorist.
Attorney David Banes, counsel for Ae Ja Elliot Park, told the U.S. District Court for the NMI yesterday that assistant attorney general Tiberius Mocanu gave Park the check pursuant to their settlement agreement.
Banes asked the court to remove the show-cause hearing from the calendar, which Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona did.
In February 2010, the federal court was informed that Park and DPS, Police Sgt. Anthony Macaranas, Police Officer Jarrod Manglona, and former police officer Michael Langdon, had reached a settlement, except for Park’s claim for attorney’s fees and costs.
Then federal court judge Alex R. Munson accepted the settlement and dismissed the case, but retained jurisdiction to decide the attorney’s fees and costs.
The amount as well as the terms and conditions of the settlement were kept confidential.
In July 2010, U.S. District Court for the NMI visiting judge William Alsup approved the settlement and dismissed the lawsuit with finality after DPS or the CNMI government agreed to settle Park’s claim for attorney’s fees and court costs.
According to court documents, Park and Norbert Duenas Babauta were involved in a head-on collision on 16 Highway in Papago on Feb. 12, 2006. Both were taken to the hospital.
Park asserted that Babauta was drunk at the time of the accident, but that police officers did not investigate his intoxication because Babauta is a local.
Some legal issues even reached the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit before the parties reached the settlement.
