Brown’s suit vs Malite ‘a waste of govt resources’

Former Attorney General Pamela Brown entered into a settlement with the Malite estate before stepping down from public office, approving the estate’s $3.45-million land compensation claim that she had initially vehemently opposed and questioned in a Superior Court lawsuit.

A source from the Attorney General’s Office said Brown signed the settlement with the estate in December 2005 when her days as AGO’s chief were numbered following the defeat of former Gov. Juan N. Babauta in last November’s elections. The source corroborated Tuesday’s statement of estate attorney Antonio Atalig that Brown had signed a $3.45-million settlement with his client.

The source, who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity, said the filing of the lawsuit to prevent the drawdown of the estate’s land compensation claim and the heated litigation that followed now appears to have been a waste of government resources after Brown entered into the settlement.

The settlement gives the estate the full amount of its original claim. One condition in the settlement, however, was that the estate would give up other land compensation claims, the source said.

Brown filed the court action sometime in December 2004 to prevent the drawdown of the $3.45-million claim by the estate. 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, a government board action that Brown had claimed as tainted with “strong appearance of ethical impropriety and conflicts of interest” in the lawsuit.

AGO’s attorneys put up a strong legal battle against the defendants in the case, who questioned the legitimacy of Brown as attorney general. Efforts to unseat Brown for initiating the suit failed, with the court upholding her legitimacy as attorney general.

Brown’s entering into the $3.45-million settlement with the estate came about even as the AGO scored partial victories in the pending suit. Lawyer Atalig said the suit would be dropped soon once the settlement terms have been satisfied.

Before Brown entered into the settlement, the AGO said talks about a possible settlement fizzled out, with the estate reportedly rejecting the initial settlement offer of $1.72 million—half the amount of the estate’s claim.

In the suit, the AGO questioned the amount being claimed by the estate, which is approximately a thousand times higher than the $3,682 awarded to the estate by a Trust Territory court, which decided the land compensation issue in 1978. The Commonwealth government obtained title to the land as a result of the condemnation.

The estate claimed, however, that it received not a single penny from the transaction. The AGO contended, though, that the order became a final judgment since the estate made no appeal on the decision.

Even if the Trust Territory court’s judgment was not 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 interest taint the MPLA board’s approval of the $3.45 million claim, saying that lawyer Atalig is brother to then MPLA board member Benita Atalig-Manglona. Atalig’s brother, the late ex-Supreme Court Justice Pedro Atalig, was a former MPLA board member. The Atalig Law Offices’ manager, Juan Demapan, is brother of MPLA chair Ana Demapan-Castro.

Proceedings at the Superior Court earlier resulted in the subpoena of then Gov. Juan N. Babauta and then Finance Secretary Fermin Atalig, among other witnesses, besides resulting in a legal battle on Brown’s legitimacy as attorney general and her authority to initiate the court action.