Citing the statements made in the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Bruce L. Jorgensen, legal counsel to intervenor Sapuro Rayphand, a board member of the Commonwealth Retirement Association, said Fund legal counsel Braddock Huesman told the appellate court that “my client [the Retirement Fund] does not have a problem getting this matter into Federal Court.”
Jorgensen said Huesman, however, did not provide any reason for a 20-month delay in the proceedings — an “unwarranted and legally defective appeal” — and seeks the remand of the lawsuit to the Superior Court.
The Ninth Circuit denied the Fund’s appeal to dismiss the lawsuit to place the Fund under federal receivership.
Jorgensen said, “Huesman has effected little if anything more than an utterly unwarranted 20-month appellate delay, a seeming aversion to instituting meaningful or minimal aim to enforce or collect upon a $231 million judgment.”
It cost the Fund, he said, astronomical billing statements with payment via the Fund assets and sua sponte [on his or her own volition] award of costs to the plaintiffs Jane Roe and John Doe which he said will come “from the exponentially dwindling coffers of the Fund under fiduciary representation by Mr. Huesman — with recourse, hopefully, to ultimately be effected by way of measures including judicial disgorgement of lucrative payments made to the Fund’s multiple counsel since June 2009.”
Jorgensen also refuted the statements made by Huesman claiming Jorgensen is misleading the public about his business location and has no correct address listed with the District Court for the NMI.
The intervenor’s legal counsel said, “Mr. Huesman has omitted to disclose in his submissions to this court the pertinent facts already known to this court…the notice of address change provided 29 June 2011 to court personnel for modification of the court’s bar records as to intervenor’s counsel.”
Jorgensen cited the suspension of U.S. postal services to Canada as among the reasons for the designation of alternate mailing address.
He said there isn’t one instance over 25 years that the court or any of the adverse counsels failed to make a “timely, expeditious communication” with him on matters relevant to court proceedings.
Huesman did not take the effort to even approach him to engage in a pre-hearing or post-hearing conversation on Oct. 13 when he had the chance to do so, Jorgensen said.
Jorgensen found unsurprising Huesman’s “abject lack of any facts” to even remotely substantiate what Jorgensen described as “outlandish claims.”
Meanwhile, Huesman, in his oral argument before the Appellate Court on Oct. 13 said the remand of the case was due to federal question jurisdiction.
He told the judges that there was a final order on the case and there was lack of jurisdiction.
However, Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain told Huesman, “The court is simply ordering a stay. That’s the caption of the order. It doesn’t say anything about ruling on qualified immunity issues.”
Huesman told the judges that his clients’ immediate defense — they are not persons under 43 USC §1983 — had been foreclosed by the District Court case.
Another judge told Huesman how could the Appellate Court have jurisdiction under the collateral order doctrine?
During that same hearing, the judges had mentioned about assigning and dedicating an off-island judge to handle lawsuit that seeks to place the Fund under federal receivership, the Appellate Court stated, “The [Ninth] Circuit needs to exercise supervision in the case to make sure that we get an Article III judge assigned to the federal litigation that you got somebody you can turn to for whatever relief either party wants from the federal court.”
A so-called Article III judge refers to a judge serving on the circuit and district court who was nominated by the U.S. president, confirmed by the U.S. Senate and serves for life.
Ninth Circuit Court judges told Jorgensen during the Oct. 13 hearing in Hawaii, “If what you tell us is correct and the Article I judge recently confirmed is recused [Judge Ramona V. Manglona], then it seems…we should probably communicate with our chief judge [Chief Judge Alex Kozinski] to make sure that a judge from off island is designated to handle this litigation. We need somebody who can maintain some continuity with this litigation.”
