By Gina Tabonares
Variety News Staff

U.S. DISTRICT Court of Guam Chief Judge Frances Tydingco-Gatewood was ready to approve the proposed notice of settlement for the earned income tax credit class suit but a number of grammatical, spelling and punctuation errors in the document that she was supposed to sign prevented her from doing so.
Because of this, Judge Tydingco-Gatewood instead issued a two-page order instructing the parties involved in the EITC settlement to make the necessary corrections before she approves the notice.
Among the seven changes that the district judge mentioned were the insertion of a comma after the words “Director of Administration” and “Director of Revenue and Taxation;” the word “their” should be changed to “his or her;” the phrase “…year in wish you wish….” should be changed to “...year in which you wish;” an apostrophe after the word “attorneys”; the word “a” should be changed to “at;” a period needs to be inserted after the zip code and the phrase “…you must submit file them Clerk…” should be changed to “…you must file them with the Clerk…”
The proposed notice of settlement is one of the required documents needing the approval of the district court in relation to the $90 million EITC preliminary settlement agreement which the court approved on Jan. 9.
The joint motion for an order of final approval and for a final judgment is to be filed before June 8, 2007.
The final motion for final certification of the EITC class settlement should be filed on the same deadline, as well as any supplement to their motion for attorney’s fees and costs.
The federal court will hold a hearing on July 6 at 10 a.m. to determine whether to grant final class certification, to review comments or objections, and to grant any motion for attorney’s fees.
The date for the completion of the processing of claims for tax years 1997 and 1998 is set for April 2, 2007 and payment of those tax years should commence once all claims for each respective year are processed.
The dates for the completion of the processing of claims for tax years 1995, 1996, 1999, 2000 and 2001 will be on July 9. For tax years 2002, 2003 and 2004, the deadline is Sept. 5, 2007.