Suspended lawyer says Govendo, Wiseman were not impartial

Suspended attorney Reynaldo O. Yana is asking for justice, expressing belief that Superior Court associate judges Kenneth L. Govendo and David A. Wiseman were not impartial in handling his disciplinary case.

Yana believes that he has not received true justice ever since Govendo refused to disqualify himself in the Angel Malite probate case.

“True justice requires, among other things, that a judge, who decides my fate in a court of law, must be impartial. I don’t believe that Judge Govendo and Judge Wiseman were impartial,” Yana said.

Yana made the statement in his reply to U.S. District Court for the NMI Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona’s order directing him and attorney Antonio M. Atalig to explain why they should not be suspended from practicing law in the district court.

In her order issued last month, Manglona said she has received from the Superior Court a copy of Wiseman’s order that indefinitely suspends Atalig and Yana from the practice of law in the Commonwealth. Manglona gave Atalig and Yana 30 days to inform her of any claim that the imposition of a similar sanction in the district court would be unwarranted.

Wiseman had ordered Atalig and Yana suspended from practicing law in the CNMI for misconduct for refusing to return $1.1 million in attorneys’ fees that they got from the Malite estate. The suspension is indefinite until Atalig and Yana have complied with conditions.

On Friday, Yana filed with the federal court a statement saying he does not have any pending cases in the district court and that he has no plans to practice in that court until the CNMI Supreme Court has decided on his appeal versus Wiseman’s suspension order.

Yana said he has no problem with the district court “rubber stamping” Wiseman’s order to suspend him but that he has “a statement to make.”

Yana discussed the procedural history of the disciplinary case against him and Atalig that, according to him, is “full of questionable events.”

Atalig, as then counsel for the Malite heirs, succeeded in getting a $3.45 million award from the Marianas Public Land Authority for the taking of their land.

After MPLA turned over the $3.45 million check to the court for custody and control, the heirs hired another attorney, Stephen Nutting, who then filed a motion to disqualify then Superior Court associate judge Juan T. Lizama from presiding over the Malite case.

Lizama was the one who approved the request of Yana and Atalig for $1.1 million in attorneys’ fees, pursuant to contingent fee agreements.

Wiseman, who presided over the disqualification motion, later disqualified Lizama. Superior Court presiding judge Robert C. Naraja then assigned Wiseman to preside over the Malite estate case where the award of attorney’s fees to Yana and Atalig was being challenged.

Yana said that before presiding over the Malite estate case, Wiseman said something to Lizama to the effect that he (Yana) and Atalig did not deserve to receive the attorney’s fees that were awarded them.

“When this information was made know to the parties, I and Atalig moved to disqualify Judge Wiseman. Judge Wiseman recused himself from the case. And the whistleblower [Judge Lizama] was charged [with] ethics violation and was sanctioned by the Supreme Court,” Yana said.

Naraja assigned Govendo to take over the case.

Yana said that prior to Govendo’s takeover of the case, he and Atalig were gathering transcripts of records of adoption cases in which Yana was either part of or had heard of.

In many of those adoption cases, Govendo repeatedly expressed his intention that he would not approve the adoptions of alien children who are either nieces or nephews of U.S. citizen petitioners or grandchildren of U.S. citizen petitioners.

“We believed that Judge Govendo was handling adoption cases in which he clearly had bias against alien children,” Yana said, adding that shortly after Govendo was assigned to the Malite case, they filed an ethics complaint against him.

In spite of that complaint, Yana said Govendo did not voluntarily recuse himself.

Because an ethics complaint is supposed to be confidential, this was not mentioned in their motion to disqualify Govendo, Yana said.

He said that Judge Richard Benson, who was assigned to investigate the ethics complaint against Govendo, waited for two years to enter a decision dismissing the complaint on the ground that Yana did not appeal each one of those adoption cases for Govendo’s unethical conduct. Yana said there were no case laws cited in Benson’s order of dismissal.

He said that Benson later manifested his double standard when Judge Manglona filed an ethics complaint against Govendo for inappropriate language used against a Filipino respondent in a child support case. Yana noted that Benson did not dismiss the case, even though the Filipino failed to appeal Govendo’s unethical conduct.

However, Yana said, in his recommendation to have Govendo be tried before the Supreme Court for unethical conduct, Benson cited some of the biased statements that Govendo made in the adoption cases.

Govendo, Yana said, was subsequently found guilty of the unethical conduct and was prohibited from handling domestic cases, including adoptions for a period of one year.

Aside from jailing him and Atalig for almost two years, Yana said that Govendo also filed a disciplinary complaint against them involving their attorney’s fees.

Wiseman was assigned to preside over the disciplinary complaint.

Yana and Atalig moved to disqualify Wiseman because the complaint had something to do with whether they deserved the attorney fees because Wiseman had previously recused himself for his comments against them with respect to their attorney fees.

“A reading of Judge Wiseman’s order suspending us manifests a clear sign that he was still harboring the same thought that he made when he made a statement to Judge Lizama that we did not deserve the fees [that] we had received,” Yana said.

Yana said the Supreme Court has reversed Govendo’s judgment that they were entitled to zero attorney fees, and remanded the Malite case for a new hearing on their attorney’s fees.

“At this writing, Judge Govendo has still not fully decided whether or not we are entitled to all the attorney’s fees that we already received,” he said.

Thus, Yana pointed out, Wiseman’s order that they should pay 10 percent of the attorney fees they received is a clear manifestation that he had already decided that they were not entitled to any attorney’s fees.