Manglona disagrees with Vietnam-based lawyer’s lawsuit venue arguments

U.S. District Court for the NMI Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona has disagreed with Vietnam-based lawyer Barry Israel’s argument that her recent ruling over a jurisdiction issue supports his claim that the CNMI is not the proper venue of Junior Larry Hillbroom’s lawsuit against him.

“Israel is wrong for two reasons,” said Manglona in her order issued on Thursday that denied the lawyer’s motion to allow him to file supplemental legal brief in support of his motion to dismiss Hillbroom’s lawsuit.

Manglona said first, in her ruling in the civil case filed by Sin Ho Nam against attorney Ramon K. Quichocho and Joaquin Q. Atalig, she did not make a new law.

The judge said in her ruling she merely applied longstanding precedent established by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in two cases.

In her recent ruling in Nam’s case, Manglona denied for lack of jurisdiction Nam’s motion to enforce his lawsuit’s settlement agreement with Quichocho and Atalig.

In that case, Manglona stated that a court has jurisdiction to enforce a settlement agreement only if it expressly retained such jurisdiction or otherwise embodied the settlement contract in the dismissal order.

In denying Israel’s motion, Manglona said this law was available to Israel when he briefed his motion to dismiss and when he replied to Hillbroom’s opposition brief.

Second, Manglona said, Hillbroom has not brought a motion in CNMI Superior Court to enforce the global settlement agreement in Hillblom’s probate.

Hillbroom, according to Manglona, has brought a new cause of action in a different court-a remedy that is not foreclosed by the Ninth Circuit’s precedent rulings.

Israel, through counsel Theodore W. Frank, cited that Manglona’s order in Nam’s case expressed that there can be no continuing jurisdiction over a settlement if not expressed in the court’s order of dismissal.

Frank argued that Manglona’s ruling is applicable to Israel’s case and deprives the district court of venue with respect to actions concerning the 1997 Global Settlement Agreement of the Hillblom Probate Estate.

Frank added that the CNMI courts have now three times confirmed that the Hillblom case closed with the issuance of the estate closure orders in April and May 2000.

Hillbroom is the reported DNA-proven son of the late business tycoon Larry Lee Hillblom. Israel is among the lawyers who represented Hillbroom in the probate case. He wants the lawsuit either dismissed or instead transferred to Guam.

Hillbroom is suing Israel in district court for allegedly conspiring to inflate the attorney’s contingency fee when Hillblom’s fortune was still undergoing probate proceedings.