District Court for the NMI Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona then dismissed the lawsuit without prejudice, which means Palacios can still refile the complaint in the future.
In an email to Variety, Palacios said: “Since I dropped my case…I am now free to talk about it. I owe it to the prisoners in there. There needs to be an alternative way to get the attention of the government without me proceeding with a lawsuit that will hurt the citizens of the CNMI. I have a strong case, but by faith and with a loving heart I chose to drop it and spare the CNMI more disaster.”
In his lawsuit, Palacios said he sustained a head injury when another inmate threw a water bottle at him in January.
Palacios named as defendants the Department of Corrections, Corrections Commissioner Wally Villagomez, Corrections officials and officers Georgia Cabrera, Kelvin Semena, Damian De Leon Guerrero, Patrick Dowai, and two unnamed Corrections officers.
Palacios sued them for failure to provide medical care, failure to protect, failure to maintain safe premises, and failure to investigate.
In June 2020, Judge Manglona found Palacios’ complaint deficient but allowed him to refile it by July 28, 2020.
She also allowed him to proceed with the lawsuit without paying the court fees.
She said some of Palacios’ claims “appear cognizable, but the complaint itself is deficient for two additional reasons: Palacios does not indicate whether he is suing [the Corrections] officials named in the complaint in their personal or official capacities, nor does he identify the specific remedy he is asking for.”
On June 17, 2020 Palacios wrote the court that he had been released from Corrections and indicated that he intended to add new factual allegations to his complaint.
The judge told him that he could file his amended complaint by Aug. 6, 2020.
The deadline passed without the court receiving anything from Palacios prompting the judge to direct him to attend in person to a show cause hearing on Nov. 5, 2020.
At the hearing, he said he did not wish to pursue the civil action.
Palacios was arrested in November 2019 after he was accused of making 36 transactions amounting to $15,614 through Western Union using his employer’s debit card.
The Attorney General’s Office charged Palacios with 36 counts of misuse of financial instruments. The case is still pending in Superior Court.
