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Malite estate insists that settlement talks are alive
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Posted on Sep 14 2005
Contrary to the Attorney General’s Office’s declaration Tuesday, the attorney for the Malite estate believes that a settlement on the dispute over the estate’s $3.45 million land compensation claim remains possible and that talks are very much alive.
“The settlement [negotiation] is an ongoing process and it’s still alive,” said estate attorney Antonio Atalig in a telephone interview yesterday.
Atalig disclosed that there is a better offer than the $1.72 million initially offered by the AGO to settle the estate’s claim.
Atalig said the estate is inclined to accept the better offer. He refused to disclose the exact amount of that offer. “The [Malite] family is okay with the better one,” he said.
Atalig said the Superior Court has tentatively set the hearing on the settlement issue on Sept. 27.
On Tuesday, AGO civil division chief James Livingstone said in a telephone interview that settlement talks “have broken down completely.”
Livingstone said that proposals were made and seemed to be accepted, but were eventually rejected. He also said that the AGO did not call for the settlement conference sometime last week.
Opposing camps have filed their respective requests for summary judgment, which remain pending before Superior Court Associate Judge Juan T. Lizama.
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. Brown had claimed that there were circumstances surrounding the transaction that create a “strong appearance of ethical impropriety and conflicts of interest.”
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 brother to 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.
The estate and the MPLA defendants also questioned Brown’s legitimacy as attorney general and her authority to initiate the court action.
