Felipe Q. Atalig
FORMER Department of Public Works Public Information Officer Felipe Q. Atalig on Wednesday asked the Superior Court to deny DPW’s motion for reconsideration of the court ruling reversing the Civil Service Commission’s order that dismissed his complaint.
Atalig, who is seeking a $200,000 settlement, said DPW’s motion for reconsideration “fails to meet the legal standard required for such a motion.”
On Oct. 10, 2024, Assistant Attorney General Charles P. Reyes Jr., on behalf of DPW, filed a motion asking the Superior Court to reconsider its earlier ruling and reaffirm CSC’s decision on Atalig’s case.
Reyes said, “Despite any failure on the part of the Civil Service Commission to strictly adhere to [the Commonwealth’s Administrative Procedure Act] requirements, the court should not remand this case back to the Civil Service Commission for another trial. Instead, the court should affirm the Civil Service Commission’s decision under the ‘harmless error’ doctrine.”
But Atalig, who represents himself, said DPW’s motion for reconsideration “has no basis under existing law,” and that DPW “utterly failed to satisfy the legal standards for reconsideration, and most certainly, DPW utterly failed to meet its burden to show how the procedural due process violation was not harmless in any legal sense.”
He said since DPW could not meet the legal standard for reconsideration, “it now makes the feeble argument that somehow the violation of [Atalig’s] statutory due process is a harmless error.”
“DPW not only failed to establish to this court that a violation for a statutory directive is not harmless, but its arguments are outrageous and disingenuous at best,” Atalig said.
He added that the harmless error doctrine requires courts to disregard errors that do not affect the parties’ substantial rights. However, he said, courts have also established that an error is not harmless if it affects the outcome of proceedings or undermine the fairness of the trial. The moving party, Atalig said, “carries the burden to demonstrate that the error was truly harmless, and any uncertainty about the effect of the error typically weighs in favor of the party challenging its harmlessness.”
Atalig said the error committed by CSC had a significant impact on the proceedings. “It affected the substantive rights of the petitioner [Atalig] and therefore cannot be deemed harmless. The Supreme Court has emphasized that an error is not harmless if it has a ‘substantial and injurious effect or influence’ on the outcome.’ ”
“There is no question that the error committed by the Civil Service Commission substantially prejudiced [Atalig’s] administrative case. This court correctly elected to interpret and construe [his] arguments as a claim [based] on the statutory due process under” the Commonwealth’s Administrative Procedure Act, Atalig said.
“The error in question most certainly undermined [Atalig’s] due process rights to a fair administrative proceeding, which is a fundamental right protected under the CNMI statute and Constitution. Errors that compromise procedural fairness are seldom considered harmless,” he added.
In March 2018, then-DPW Secretary James Ada terminated Atalig for alleged sexual harassment.
But according to Atalig, he and a male co-worker were “joking around” when he placed his hands inside his co-worker’s pocket.
