Robert Bernard C. Travilla, owner of Salbahe Co., who is being represented by attorney Brien Sers Nicholas, is asking for damages and injunctive relief against Barcinas.
Court records showed Barcinas had been served with Travilla’s complaint that was received by Hopwood Jr. High School’s registrar’s office, according to Nicholas’s certificate of service.
Barcinas had yet to file his response.
On Sept. 2, 2011, Travilla said Barcinas “publicly announced that [his] clothing apparels were ban[ned] from the Hopwood’s campus.”
Barcinas made the announcement during the school’s orientation that was attended by students and their parents for school year 2011-2012, the complaint said.
When asked by some students and their parents who were present during the announcement, according to the complaint, Barcinas responded by saying publicly that Travilla “was involved in gang related-criminal activities and that he was being investigated by the CNMI’s Department of Public Safety for such gang related-criminal activities.”
Nicholas said Barcinas’s public announcements against his client “for such gang related-criminal activities were all false and malicious.”
“As a proximate result of [Barcinas’s] false and malicious statements…, [Travilla] has suffered loss of his reputation, shame, and injury to his feelings and good name as well as his business practices within and outside of the CNMI,” the complaint stated.
Court records showed Travilla has a yet-to-be adjudicated lawsuit for negligence in Superior Court regarding a vehicular incident in 2006 in which he is the defendant.
For that case, Travilla said in his response that the plaintiff was “very intoxicated” at the time of the incident.
