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Jorgensen says he is willing to relinquish post
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Posted on Feb 21 2012
Attorney Bruce Jorgensen said he remains willing to relinquish his position as counsel for two unnamed retirees who are suing the NMI Retirement Fund to any willing and competent CNMI-situated lawyer.
Jorgensen said he would have had no participation in this case had any other attorney been willing to represent the plaintiffs from the outset, with payment of zero compensation.
“But no CNMI-situated lawyer has been willing for good reason—a well-chronicled historical propensity on the part of CNMI officials and CNMI-retained lawyers to target public-interest attorneys with institutional and publicly-funded reprisal endeavors, particularly where Jorgensen is concerned,” he said.
The Fund, through counsel Braddock Huesman, is asking Jorgensen to associate himself with a local lawyer as he (Jorgensen) has too many addresses, “apparently due to his peripatetic lifestyle.”
As an alternative, Huesman said the Fund should be allowed service on Jorgensen through the district court’s clerk’s office, as provided for in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedures.
Huesman pointed out that the Local Rules require admitted attorneys to maintain a local office, and if not, they must associate with local counsel. Huesman said that Jorgensen is an admitted attorney but does not have a local office and has not associated with local counsel.
In his response, Jorgensen said that in the last 12 years, the district court has allowed the waiver of local counsel rules, given the CNMI public interests that he alone has been willing to advocate.
He pointed out that more than 31 months have elapsed since the case began with no question raised as to the local counsel scenario, so Huesman’s “timing and motives appear curious, if not suspect.”
“Tantamount to a diversionary smokescreen, the pending motion constitutes yet another dilatory endeavor interposed for curious and suspect, if not overtly improper motive and purpose,” he said.
Jorgensen is suing Gov. Benigno R. Fitial and the Fund on behalf of two unnamed retirees over the alleged non-payment of their retirement benefits.
