CHIEF Judge Ramona V. Manglona of the District Court for the NMI ordered former Imperial Pacific International LLC. Chairwoman Lijie Cui to pay a total of $42,200 in court-imposed sanctions.
The court has repeatedly found Cui to be not in compliance with a previous preservation order and contempt order regarding the Electronically Stored Information or ESI that she created or used, including emails, and ESI data sent or received by others on her behalf.
Cui is a third-party witness in the lawsuit of seven construction workers against IPI and its former contractor and subcontractor, MCC International and Gold Mantis Construction Decoration, both of which have already settled with the plaintiffs: Tianming Wang, Dong Han, Yongjun Meng, Liangcai Sun, Youli Wang, Qingchun Xu, and Duxin Yan.
The plaintiffs have sued over allegations of labor violations and human trafficking.
On Dec. 22, 2021, the court found Cui in contempt for failing to comply with the court’s preservation orders on ESI data, and imposed a daily per diem sanction of $200 starting on Dec. 23, 2021 until she could comply.
The court then held a separate order to show cause hearing on Dec. 29, 2021, and a status conference on the pending ESI preservation order.
Based on Cui’s continued failure to comply, Judge Manglona increased the daily per diem sanction to $1,000 starting Dec. 30, 2021 until Cui could purge her contempt.
Cui and the plaintiffs, through attorneys Aaron Halegua and Bruce Berline, subsequently entered into a stipulation — which the court granted — to continue the evidentiary hearing set for Jan. 27, 2022 to Feb. 8, 2022.
As part of the stipulation, Cui agreed that the $1,000 daily sanction shall continue to accrue through that extension.
On Feb. 3, 2022, the judge granted in part the plaintiffs’ motion to extend time to allow Berline to return to Saipan. The court then reset the evidentiary hearing to Feb. 18, 2022 which was later continued to March 8, 2022 due to scheduling issues as well as unforeseen circumstances.
According to Judge Manglona’s order on Monday, because of the court resetting the evidentiary hearing, the daily sanction was tolled from Feb. 8, 2022 to the new evidentiary hearing date, and not starting Feb. 3, 2022, as Cui contends.
The evidentiary hearing was held over a couple of days starting March 8, 2022.
On March 10, 2022, the judge found that Cui had finally purged her contempt.
“Given that Cui presented sufficient evidence demonstrating that she purged her contempt, the court will not impose sanctions during the period she was presenting evidence to prove that she purged her contempt,” Judge Manglona said.
Cui, through attorney Joey San Nicolas, said the total sanctions owed are $36,200.
But based on the court’s own calculations, the amount owed is $42,200, Judge Manglona said.
She earlier said that because the $5.4 million default judgement in favor of the plaintiffs against IPI remained unsatisfied, all ESI data held by the former IPI chair remains relevant to the proceeding.
In February 2022, the court also approved the stay agreement between IPI and the seven plaintiffs.
The plaintiffs “shall stay enforcement of their default judgement in exchange for IPI and certain other parties securing a supersedeas [or appeal] bond in the amount of $6 million on or before June 30, 2022, committing other collateral, and fulfilling other obligations set forth in the stay agreement.”
