CHIEF Judge Ramona V. Manglona of the District Court for the NMI ordered Imperial Pacific International LLC Chairwoman Cui Li Jie to deliver $3,000 to the plaintiffs’ attorneys to pay the vendor who will make a forensic copy of her cell phone.
At a hearing on Friday, the judge told the IPI chairwoman that the court granted the plaintiffs’ request that all electronically stored information or ESI be provided to a third-party vendor for collection of data.
The judge directed Cui Li Jie to sign an affidavit regarding the tendered cell phone and SIM cards, and to include information explaining what happened to her Chinese SIM card.
Judge Manglona also ordered the parties to adhere to the plaintiffs’ proposal in the collection protocol, but added that both sides must have access to the data.
She said she will issue a couple of orders regarding default judgment in the lawsuit of seven construction workers who sued IPI and its former contractor and subcontractor MCC International, and Gold Mantis over alleged forced labor and human trafficking.
Attorneys Aaron Halegua and Bruce Berline represent the plaintiffs: Tianming Wang, Dong Han, Yongjun Meng, Liangcai Sun, Youli Wang, Qingchun Xu, and Duxin Yan. They are asking the federal court to award them $3.86 million in compensatory damages and $7.72 million in punitive damages.
Halegua previously asked the court to issue an order to show cause against the IPI chairwoman for her failure to comply with an order directing her to make a forensic copy of her cell phone data, including data from her WeChat account and all other ESI data within.
In Halegua’s second declaration in support of a motion for an order to show cause against the IPI chairwoman, he said: “After plaintiffs detailed the deficiencies in Ms. Cui’s alleged effort to preserve a copy of the data on her phone, she has made no effort to properly preserve the data on her phone, let alone hire a third-party vendor to do so. Instead, plaintiffs were forced to contact multiple vendors in the United States that could perform this task, price out the costs, and negotiate a scope of work. Plaintiffs contacted more than three vendors as part of this effort.”
Halegua said on May 4, 2021, he and Cui Li Jie’s attorney, Juan T. Lizama, agreed to an arrangement in which the plaintiffs would retain the vendor “TransPerfect” to perform the preservation of the data on Ms. Cui’s phone and the associated reporting. Ms. Cui would pay for these services.
Halegua said Lizama promised to send declarations addressing what happened to the ESI data on Cui’s phone; to take possession of Cui’s mobile phone; and to deliver $3,000 to be held in the plaintiffs’ counsel’s escrow account to pay the vendor.
Halegua said Lizama later contacted him to state that Cui insisted that she be the client of TransPerfect.
Halegua agreed to consider this proposal upon reviewing the declarations that had been prepared by Cui and her associates.
In Cui’s declaration that was sent to Halegua, she declared that she has only used one cell phone since March 26, 2020. “I’ve been using the SIM card that I brought from Hong Kong since March 26…. Mr. Liu Hanqin purchased another SIM for me for data only on March 26.”
She added, “I am prepared to [hand over] my phone to opposing counsel to make forensic copy of the phone.”
But according to Halegua, they had neither received a response to their May 7 email, nor received any indication that Lizama was in possession of either Cui’s cell phone or SIM card.
Moreover, Halegua said they had not received $3,000 from Cui to cover the costs of TransPerfect’s services.
