Cui Li Jie, the Chairman of troubled Saipan integrated resort operator Imperial Pacific Holdings, has been accused of deliberate and sustained noncompliance with court orders after blaming recent obstacles on her lawyer.
Cui issued a request this week for an extension of time in order to obtain legal representation before any future legal proceedings take place after her former lawyer, Juan T. Lizama, resigned on 29 May.
Imperial Pacific has been involved in multiple lawsuits in recent months around its failure to pay its debts and narrowly avoided being placed into receivership in March after reaching an agreement with the US Department of Labor. Both the company and Cui herself are currently facing a lawsuit filed by seven construction workers seeking damages over alleged labor law violations and human trafficking.
The lawyer for those workers, Aaron Halegua, told the court this week that Cui’s attempts to blame her recent lack of compliance over various courtroom requests “falls flat” and that she has exhibited a “pattern of obstructionist and disobedient behavior.”
As reported by the Saipan Tribune, Halegua also listed five examples of Cui being uncooperative in cases unrelated to the lawyer in question.
Specifically, Cui had evaded service of and failed to respond to a subpoena, allegedly deleted WeChat data from her phone following a 4 March request to preserve her phone data, filed a declaration that her phone data had been preserved when a report showed it to be empty, claimed to have lost the SIM card she had been using since arriving in Saipan, and continuing to use the phone even after being issued with a preservation order on 31 March.
“This pattern of noncompliance cannot all fall solely on the shoulders of Mr Lizama,” Halegua said this week.
In requesting an extension, Cui said she would explain all previous failures once she finds a “responsible and competent” lawyer.
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