Lt. Gov. Torres gets more time in Hunter’s lawsuit

The Office of the Attorney General has substituted the Office of Senate legal counsel as counsel for Lt. Gov. Ralph DLG. Torres in connection with Glen Hunter’s Open Government Act lawsuit over the enactment of the casino law.

Assistant attorney general David Lochabay has informed the Superior Court that he has been assigned to represent Torres in Hunter’s lawsuit.

The Office of Senate legal counsel used to serve as counsel for then-Senate president Torres in the case.

Torres, through Lochabay, filed an emergency motion on Monday to give him more time to file a brief regarding a deposition dispute in the case.

Deposition refers to the taking of testimony of a witness outside of court.

A discovery dispute has arisen in the case after Lochabay advised Torres not to answer Hunter’s counsel Jennifer Dockter’s questions regarding some lawmakers’ Hong Kong trip in 2013 and 2014.

At the Jan. 29 hearing on the deposition dispute, Superior Court Associate Judge David A. Wiseman ordered Torres to file by last Tuesday his motion and memorandum in support of his request for a protective order.

Protective order refers to a court’s direction to protect a person from further harassment, services of process, or discovery.

Wiseman also allowed Hunter to file his opposition to the motion yesterday. The judge then set a hearing on the matter for yesterday at 1:30pm and allowed Torres to file his brief yesterday.

Wiseman gave Hunter until Feb. 11 to file his response and set a hearing on Feb. 12 at 1:30pm.

In Torres’ request for an extension, Lochabay said Torres cannot prepare and file a competent brief without a deposition transcript.

Lochabay said he contacted a staff at the Judicial Services Plus last Thursday afternoon to order the transcript but was told that the staff would not be coming in on Super Bowl Monday.

Lochabay said he then assigned the task of producing the transcript from the audio recording to the OAG’s legal secretary, but it proved to be a slow and exacting process.

This, he said, does not leave sufficient time to locate and cite the material in dispute in the transcript and prepare and file a competent brief by Tuesday.

Lochabay said he called Dockter about the problem, and that the lawyer had no objection to a deadline extension.

Wiseman has denied Gov. Eloy S. Inos’ and the CNMI government’s motion to reconsider the court’s denial to dismiss them as parties in the case.

Wiseman said he cannot find that Inos and the CNMI government met their burden for the extraordinary remedy of a motion for reconsideration under the Commonwealth Rules of Civil Procedure.

Hunter is suing the government, Inos, the Lottery Commission, Torres, House Speaker Joseph Deleon Guerrero (Ind- Saipan), and two other lawmakers.

Hunter has asked the court to issue a declaratory judgment, explicitly stating that the OGA does, in fact, apply to the Legislature, and that the lawmakers named in the lawsuit are properly before the court for violating their public notice provisions.

Last October, Wiseman issued a decision that dismissed the Lottery Commission as a party in the lawsuit but denied a motion to dismiss Inos and the CNMI government as improper parties in Hunter’s lawsuit.

Wiseman said the Lottery Commission is an improper party due to its lack of involvement or control over the Legislature, but he cannot dismiss Inos in these circumstances, as the governor became an indispensable party by signing the bills into law.

In the same decision, Wiseman denied the CNMI government’s motion to dismiss Hunter’s claims. The judge denied the CNMI Legislative Bureau’s motion to dismiss the claims against Deleon Guerrero, and now vice speaker Rafael Demapan (R-Saipan) and Rep. Felicidad Ogumoro (R-Saipan).

Wiseman also denied Torres’ motion to dismiss the claims against him.