Malite estate negotiations ‘good as dead’

Over two months after the Attorney General’s Office and the Malite estate’s attorney sat before the bargaining table, settlement negotiations on the estate’s $3.45-million land compensation claim are now as good as dead.

AGO civil division chief James Livingstone said yesterday that the talks have “broken down completely.”

“Proposals were made. [They] seem to be accepted, but they ultimately weren’t accepted,” Livingstone said. “There’s been no agreement.”

Sometime in July, Malite estate attorney Antonio Atalig confirmed news about settlement negotiations that could possibly end the dispute. At that time, Atalig said the talks were making progress.

The AGO reportedly offered the estate half of its land compensation claim—or approximately $1.72 million—to settle the dispute. Atalig could not be reached at press time for an interview regarding the settlement talks and why he rejected the offer.

Livingstone said the case’s fate would depend on the ruling of Superior Court Associate Justice Juan T. Lizama, who has yet to decide on the request for summary judgment by both parties.

The court conducted a settlement conference sometime last week but Livingstone clarified that the AGO did not call for it.

Attorney General Pamela Brown filed the Malite lawsuit sometime in December 2004 to prevent the drawdown of some $3.45 million in land compensation being claimed by the estate from the government’s land compensation fund.

The complaint impleaded the estate’s administrator, Jesus Tudela, the Marianas Public Lands Authority, its board members, and commissioner as defendants. The MPLA board had approved the payment of $3.45 million to the Malite estate.

Brown had claimed that there were circumstances surrounding the transaction that create a “strong appearance of ethical impropriety and conflicts of interest.”

The MPLA board approved the land compensation claim, a matter that was already decided by the Trust Territory court in 1978. That court determined the compensation for condemnation of a parcel of land that now forms part of the Marianas High School in the amount of $3,682. The Commonwealth government obtained title to the land as a result of the condemnation.

Brown’s attorneys questioned the amount of $3.45 million, approximately 1,000 times than the compensation determined in the 1978 Trust Territory court order, which they claimed to be a final judgment in which no appeal was taken.

Even if the Trust Territory court judgment may not have been actually satisfied, the amount of $3.45 million does not conform to valuation provisions of the law, with the AGO saying that valuation of condemned land should be determined at the time of the taking of the property by the Commonwealth government.

The AGO had contended that conflicts of interests taint the MPLA board’s approval of the estate’s $3.45 million claim, saying that lawyer Atalig is a brother of MPLA board member Benita Atalig-Manglona. Atalig’s brother, the late ex-Supreme Court Justice Pedro Atalig, was a former MPLA board member. Atalig’s office manager, Juan Demapan, is brother of MPLA chair Ana Demapan-Castro.

Proceedings at the Superior Court earlier resulted in the subpoena of Gov. Juan N. Babauta and Finance Secretary Fermin Atalig, among other witnesses.

The estate and the MPLA defendants had questioned Brown’s legitimacy as attorney general and her authority to initiate the court action.