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Fund incurs $5,685 in attorneys’ fees
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Posted on Dec 01 2011
By Ferdie de la Torre
Reporter
Reporter
The NMI Retirement Fund notified the district court yesterday that it incurred $5,685 in attorneys’ fees in responding to Sapuro Rayphand’s bid to transfer the Fund’s lawsuit against the Fitial administration from the Superior Court to the federal court.
Fund counsel Braddock J. Huesman asked the U.S. District Court for the NMI to award attorneys’ fees in the amount of $5,685, made payable to the Fund.
Huesman declared that he spent 37.9 hours in responding to Rayphand’s meritless notice of removal and the accompanying cross-motion to strike. Rayphand is a Commonwealth Retirement Association board member.
Huesman submitted the billings in response to designated Judge Frances M. Tydingco-Gatewood’s ruling that found Rayphand’s removal of the Fund’s lawsuit improper.
In that order, Tydingco-Gatewood remanded the Fund’s lawsuit to the Superior Court and ordered Rayphand to pay attorney’s fees and costs to the Fund.
In the eight-page order, Tydingco-Gatewood noted that much of Rayphand’s argument for intervention is nonsensical and unrelated to the issues at hand.
Attorney Bruce Jorgensen served as counsel for Rayphand.
On Sept. 8, 2011, Rayphand, through Jorgensen, notified the district court that he wants the Fund’s lawsuit against the CNMI government to be removed from the Superior Court and transferred to the federal court.
Rayphand stated that it has been more than two years now since associate judge Govendo rendered a $230 million judgment in the case yet there has been little, if any, meaningful steps toward enforcement of that judgment.
