Palacios, R-Saipan, at the same time filed a motion for summary judgment and a memorandum of points and authorities.
He asked the court to deny the Attorney General Office’s motion to dismiss his petition, saying his act caused no injury so “there is no relevant issue of causation and no relevant issue of remedy or redressability entertained in the declaratory judgment.”
According to Palacios, “Fitial’s long and verbose argument about the three elements of standing that must be satisfied before the petition at hand proceeds, i.e. injury, causation, and redressability, are essentially irrelevant in this matter of before the court.”
He said when he filed his petition for declaratory judgment, he was not questioning whether Fitial fully complied with the CNMI Constitution in vetoing House Local Bill 17-44.
He was only asking the court to clear the veto message’s “obstruction to viewing…that an enacted local law by the Legislature and the Saipan and Northern Islands Legislative Delegation is a commonwealth law.”
Two weeks ago, Assistant Attorney General Michael Stanker, who represented Fitial, asked the court to dismiss with prejudice Palacios’ petition for declaratory relief, saying the lawmaker “lacks the standing to bring this suit.“
Palacios expressed disappointment with the governor’s move, describing it as “legal maneuvering.”
In his opposition last Friday, Palacios said his standing is not a ground to dismiss his petition “and there is a justifiable controversy of a civil nature to be settled.”
He explained that a declaratory relief is different from a normal lawsuit for injury and damages as it asks the court to apply law to the facts in a dispute in order to declare who is right and who is wrong.
Since no damages have yet occurred, a declaratory judgment does not order any party to take any action or pay any money although it is binding on both parties, Palacios said.
Palacios said the question he brought up was not whether Fitial complied with the CNMI Constitution in vetoing the local casino bill — it was just to ask whether a local law is a commonwealth law.
