Chief Justice Rabner announced that Lisa D. Bigony has been named Appellate Division Deputy Clerk for Case Processing, effective today. In that role, according to a press release, she will be "responsible for oversight of the various units of case processing, including paralegal and legal, case processing, Civil Appeals Settlement Program, public access unit, calendaring, final disposition, and records and reception."...
On Tuesday, September 29, judges on the Appellate Division's Part D will hear oral argument in In the Matter of the Applicability of Certain Statutes and Regulations to Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. The issue is whether New Jersey's Secretary of Higher Education wrongly determined that Rutgers is obligated to comply with regulations promulgated by the Secretary in 2022 that require colleges and universities subject to the Secretary's jurisdiction to go through a process of having their programmatic decisions approved by the Secretary....
No posts on this blog covered published Appellate Division decisions issued in August. Thus, as with the Supreme Court decisions from August, this post will be a "lightning round" of brief summaries of the six August published opinions of the Appellate Division....
During August, while this blog was inactive, the Supreme Court had its second-busiest month of the Term that ends today. The Court issued ten decisions, a figure exceeded only by the twelve rulings handed down in July. To catch up, this post will consist of "lightning round" summaries, at most a few sentences each, about those decisions. The plan is for this blog's more traditional detailed analyses to return in the new Term....
Professional and personal obligations sometimes get in the way of keeping up with our courts. July has been full of appellate law developments that deserve attention. This is the first of several posts that will do that....
Chief Justice Rabner has issued the 2026-27 General Assignment Order, which is available here. As regards the Appellate Division, some things have changed while others remain the same....
Diana v. LVNV Funding, LLC, ___ N.J. ___ (2026). [Disclosure: I represented amici curiae Consumers League of New Jersey and National Association of Consumer Attorneys in this appeal]. In a unanimous opinion by Justice Hoffman, the Supreme Court held that plaintiff, suing on behalf of a putative class, could not assert an implied private right of action to void a loan contract, pursuant to the New Jersey Consumer Finance Licensing Act, CFLA, N.J.S.A. 17:11C-1 to -49 ("CFLA"), against institutional debt-buyer defendants that allegedly purchased his credit card debt without a requisite license....
In an Order available here, Chief Justice Rabner announced that Judge Zazzali-Hogan will be temporarily assigned to the Appellate Division's Part G. That assignment will commence on August 24 and will extend through November 1 and "for such additional period of time as may be necessary to decide all motions and to conclude all matters assigned to" her....
Reed v. Muoio, ___ N.J. ___ (2026). As Justice Noriega said in his unanimous opinion in this appeal, the case centered on a 1995 amendment to the New Jersey Constitution, N.J. Const. art. VIII, § 2, ¶ 5), that "prohibit[ed] any law, rule, or regulation that was determined to be an unfunded mandate." The amendment directed the Legislature to establish the Council on Unfunded Mandates ("the Council") to resolve whether a statute, rule, or regulation was an unfunded mandate. The issue in this case was whether the Council exceeded its powers....
In the time since the most recent post on this blog about published Appellate Division opinions, that court issued published rulings in four cases. Here are summaries:...
