Court stops release of $3.45M to Malite estate

The Superior Court has issued a temporary restraining order blocking the release of some $3.45 million in land compensation claims by the Malite estate.

Associate Judge Juan T. Lizama issued the TRO late Thursday afternoon last week. The TRO indicated that it would be effective for 10 days, “unless with that time it is extended for good cause shown.”

Attorney general Pamela Brown said yesterday that her office asked the court for the extension of the TRO’s deadline. She said the AGO’s attorneys are drafting a pleading requesting the court for a preliminary injunction.

“If this motion [for TRO] were not granted, plaintiff [CNMI government] would suffer the irreparable injury of incurring a large public debt that might take many years for the Commonwealth to repay,” Lizama stated in his order.

“Defendants’ argument that this is not irreparable harm because the money could be recovered by subsequent suit is not convincing. Once the money is disbursed, it might easily be consumed by estate expenses and therefore be rendered unrecoverable,” he said.

The CNMI government, represented by Brown, recently filed with the Superior Court a complaint that sought to prevent the monies’ disbursement from the government’s Land Compensation Fund.

The complaint impleaded as defendants the Marianas Public Lands Authority; its acting commissioner Edward Deleon Guerrero and its board of directors, including chair Ana Demapan-Castro and members Nicolas Nekai, Felix Sasamoto, Manny Villagomez, and Benita Atalig-Manglona; the Commonwealth Development Authority; and Malite estate administrator Jesus Tudela.

The AGO said in the complaint that there are circumstances surrounding the transaction, which create a “strong appearance of ethical impropriety and conflicts of interest.”

The lawsuit sparked the filing of a separate action by former Senate President Juan S. Demapan, which sought to declare that Brown is holding the position of attorney general unlawfully. In that case, Malite estate attorney Pedro Atalig, a former Supreme Court justice, represents Demapan, brother of Supreme Court Chief Justice Miguel S. Demapan.

Atalig had argued that Brown has no authority to bring the lawsuit before the court, questioning the validity of her confirmation as attorney general. He said the Trust Territory government, through a 1978 court order that awarded only some $3,682 to the Malite estate for the condemnation of a parcel of land that now forms part of the Marianas High School, treated the Malite heirs “like dirt.”

Atalig also said that, in preventing the release of the $3.45 million compensation to the Malite heirs, the CNMI government continues the unfair treatment of the heirs by the TT government.

In a press conference yesterday, Brown said the lawsuit filed on her behalf by the AGO’s civil division chief Benjamin Sachs also protects the judicial branch from an act by the Legislature, in the sense that the Land Compensation Act, a legislation that mandates land compensation for the government’s land-taking, should not deal with adjudicated court cases.

She said that, while she feels sympathetic to the situation of the Malite heirs, MPLA’s interpretation that the new law covers resolved cases is inappropriate. She insisted that the lawsuit was filed to protect the interests of the “MPLA, CDA, the CNMI people and public lands.”

In addition to the alleged improprieties that taint the land compensation transaction, Brown also said that MPLA board chair Demapan-Castro is “somehow related” to V.M. Sablan, which conducted the appraisal that pegged the compensation at $3.45 million, on the assumption that the land taking happened in 1991, when the real estate’s market value was estimated at $500 per square meter. The TT government actually took the land in 1968.

Regarding other alleged improprieties that taint the transaction, Sachs had also pointed out in the complaint that Atalig is a former member of the MPLA board. Atalig and his brother and Malite estate co-counsel Antonio Atalig, who represented their client in their request for land compensation before the MPLA, are brothers to MPLA board member Atalig-Manglona.

Sachs said Atalig-Manglona voted in favor of the land compensation request, adding that the board member should have known that her brother would derive substantial contingency fee from the land compensation. Pedro Atalig denied this claim, saying that the board member abstained from voting.

According to Sachs, MPLA legal counsel Raymond Quichocho shares an office with Pedro Atalig, whose office manager, Juan Demapan, is brother of the MPLA chair.

Sachs also questioned the requisition signed by the acting commissioner, DeLeon Guerrero, amid challenges to the legitimacy of his appointment as MPLA commissioner. The Land Compensation Act of 2002 requires the MPLA commissioner to sign all requisitions for land compensation payments.

He noted that Henry Hofschneider, who was earlier unilaterally terminated by the MPLA chair from the post of commissioner, claims that he remains commissioner. He also questioned the termination of Hofschneider by Demapan-Castro, saying that the action was done without a proper board meeting.

The court said several issues relating to the Malite’s land compensation claim and the government’s lawsuit need to be resolved before the monies should be released.

“The court sees numerous important and difficult legal issues involved in this case, including questions about the propriety of the current compensation claim, including the amount to be paid and the fact that the issue was not resolved as part of the ongoing probate of the estate of Angel Malite, as well as the fairness of the initial condemnation as to the value given and as to whether compensation should have gone to the estate or directly to the heirs in accordance with then existing law,” Judge Lizama stated in the TRO.

Pedro Atalig could not be reached for comment as of press time, in connection with the court’s TRO and on Brown’s statements.