Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Oh the News!

The Saipan Tribune gives a sketchy report about a lawsuit recently filed:

where: the 9th Circuit (this is a court of limited jurisdiction and you can't usually initiate cases there)

Plaintiff: National Chamorro Association of the Mariana Islands/president Glenn H. Manglona. This organization is so well known that no one has heard of it until today's newspaper article came out. (Well, maybe in Rota?)

Represented by/Attorneys/Co Plaintiffs: Robin Hood International Human Rights Legal Defense Fund and Paul Risenhoover. OMG! One federal judge said Paul Risenhoover is "a fraudulent opportunist."

Judge Batts made clear she viewed Mr. Risenhoover, an Oklahoma native who is about 30, as an unsavory character. She described him as a fervent anti-Communist who was deemed to be so unreliable by the Government that it ultimately stopped its dealings with him, fearing he would become a liability at trial....

[S]he said in her opinion that Mr. Risenhoover, who speaks Mandarin Chinese, English and Hebrew and claims to be a law school graduate who has not passed the bar, may have also been involved in other illegal activities, including other illegal organ sales and a fraud scheme on the Internet.


And if all that isn't enough, the lawsuit itself sounds ridiculous. The Trib says the complaint is 200 pages! That's long by any legal standard.

And some highlights to emphasize just how ludicrous this is:

They're also filing in international court on behalf of native Chamorros, Carolinians and Formosans???

The 9th circuit lawsuit apparently challenges whether the US Congress had the authority to enter into the Covenant. (Please read the US Constitution and the power bestowed on Congress regarding foreign affairs, territories, and commerce)

5th and 14th amendment claims for takings violations without compensation /impairment of contracts. (Is there any foreign worker here with a contract under CNMI law that was in effect on 11/28/2009 for a period that would last beyond 11/27/2011? I doubt it. Most CNMI contracts were for one year, some for two. But longer?)

And the lawsuit claims we have a right to cheap foreign labor under CNMI control because otherwise we may not be able to live--the CNRA constitutes a deprivation of the right to life!

What nonsense.

(Of course, Wendy beat me to this, and she has the pleadings available for review. I especially like that they have highlighted portions in yellow, and green, and red, and blue...OMG!)

2 comments:

Wendy Doromal said...

Thank goodness someone else was floored by this lawsuit. The documents look like they were written by a child. What is with the colors and highlighting? I can't make sense of this and never saw anything like this. I don't think Risenhoover is an attorney.

Saipan Writer said...

The one article from NYC says that he claims to have graduated from law school but never passed a bar.

I didn't have the time or patience to sift through everything to figure out if there was anything even remotely intelligible in the gibberish. Looked mostly like a cut and paste job from unrelated materials.