Lawyer asks federal court to allow removal of Fund’s suit

Bruce Jorgensen, counsel for Commonwealth Retirement Association board member Sapuro Rayphand, has asked the U.S. District Court for the NMI to allow the removal of the NMI Retirement Fund’s lawsuit against the CNMI government from the Superior Court to the district court.

In Rayphand’s opposition to the Fund’s motion to remand the lawsuit to the Superior Court, Jorgensen said that CRA’s standing as a post-judgment intervenor has been recognized by the parties in the lawsuit.

Jorgensen said that Superior Court associate judge Kenneth L. Govendo granted CRA’s intervention.

“More than 19 months have lapsed since intervention transpired-during which CRA members and non-members, including Fund retiree beneficiaries, and the general public, have witnessed the Fund’s rapidly escalating demise,” the lawyer said.

On the Fund’s motion to sanction Jorgensen, Jorgensen said that Fund counsel Braddock Huesman’s assertion is a “frivolous sanction request that does not merit monetary award.”

Jorgensen said the documents he submitted in court in a separate lawsuit filed by unnamed retirees against the CNMI government and the Fund, “have chronicled with specificity the lavish fees bestowed at expense of the Fund’s rapidly dwindling money, upon Huesman and other Fund privately-retained though politically-favored counsel-hundreds of thousands over a year, has produced little more than just accumulation in the hands of Fund counsel.”

“Removal in lieu of remand promotes judicial economy while averting conflicts of law as between this federal court and the CNMI Judiciary respecting not merely present claims, but those visibly on the horizon of federal question derivation,” Jorgensen said.

Rayphand has 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 Govendo rendered a $230-million judgment in the case yet there has been little, if any, meaningful steps toward enforcement of that judgment.

Huesman, in a motion to remand, argued that Rayphand’s notice of removal is defective as CRA is not a defendant in the matter and thus cannot remove the case.

Even if CRA is considered a defendant for removal purposes, Huesman said that not all defendants have agreed to removal.

Huesman asked the U.S. District Court to hold Rayphand and Jorgensen liable to pay the Fund’s attorneys’ fees in answering to their court action “that was completely devoid of merit.”

Last week, Gov. Benigno R. Fitial and Lt. Gov. Eloy S. Inos agreed with the Fund that the Fund’s lawsuit should be remanded to the Superior Court.

Fitial and Inos, in his capacity as then Finance secretary, through assistant attorney general Michael A. Stanker, filed in District Court a joinder in the Fund’s motion to remand.

Stanker did not present any argument on behalf of Fitial and Inos in the joinder.