NJ Appellate Law Blog – NJ Appellate Lawyer Bruce D. Greenberg blogs about Appeals and Appellate Law Practice

Interlocutory Appeal Treated as Final, But Appellant Loses Anyway

Rubessa v. Warner, 2012 WL 1468789 (App. Div. April 30, 2012). In spite of frequent warnings that interlocutory appeals improperly brought as final will be dismissed, the Appellate Division occasionally overlooks...

A Municipality Sues the DEP: Mandamus and Other Theories

Township of Neptune v. New Jersey Dep't of Environmental Protection, 425 N.J. Super. 422 (App. Div. 2012). The Township of Neptune sued the DEP in the Law Division for an order requiring...

An Important Decision Under the Evidence Rules

Konop v. Rosen, 425 N.J. Super. 391 (App. Div. 2012). Trial lawyers and appellate lawyers take heed! The Appellate Division, speaking through an encyclopedic opinion by Judge Messano, has issued one of...

Wikipedia in the Appellate Courts

A recent posting about citations to Wikipedia in the federal Circuit Courts of Appeals leads to the question of what the attitude is toward Wikipedia in the Supreme Court of...

"You Don't Have to be Jewish …" (A Law Against Discrimination Case)

Cowher v. Carson & Roberts, 425 N.J. Super. 285 (App. Div. 2012). Plaintiff Myron Cowher worked for a trucking company. His two supervisors persistently hurled anti-Semitic epithets at him, including (among many...

Front Pay

Quinlan v. Curtiss-Wright Corp., 425 N.J. Super. 335 (App. Div. 2012). This is a long-running employment discrimination case that came back to the Appellate Division after a remand by the Supreme Court....

If Your Employer Tells You That You "Have to Resign," And You Do Resign, You Have Not Left Your Job "Voluntarily"

Lord v. Board of Review, 425 N.J. Super. 187 (App. Div. 2012). Did an employee who accepted his employer's directive that he "had to resign" leave his job "voluntarily" so as to disqualify...

Relation Back and Other Statute of Limitations Issues

Walker v. Choudhary, 425 N.J. Super. 135 (App. Div. 2012). This was a medical malpractice and wrongful death action. Three defendants, a doctor, a medical group, and a company that owns a...

Law of the Case Doctrine Applied in a Complex Class Action

Little v. Kia Motors America, Inc., 425 N.J. Super. 82 (App. Div. 2012). In this consumer class action, which involved alleged defects in Kia automobiles, Judge #1 presided over a classwide jury trial. The...

Valuable Insights From Appellate Division Judges

Last night's meeting of the NJSBA's Appellate Practice Committee, of which I am a member and a past Chair, was a roundtable discussion with six distinguished Appellate Division judges. The...

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144145146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167…Last

"Hot Fun in the Summertime": Appellate Division Summer Parts

In an Order available here, Chief Justice Rabner announced the lineup for the Appellate Division's summer Parts. As has been customary, the "summer" runs not between the meteorological start and end dates for summer, nor from Memorial Day to Labor Day, but from June 16 through September 7....

The Supreme Court Confirms That Municipalities Can be Subjected to Sanctions for Frivolous Litigation

Borough of Englewood Cliffs v. Trautner, ___ N.J. ___ (2025). This appeal presented the question of whether municipalities can be liable to pay sanctions for frivolous litigation, under the Frivolous Litigation Statute, N.J.S.A. 2A:15-59.1 ("the FLS"). In a 5-0 opinion written by Justice Fasciale (Chief Justice Rabner and Justice Hoffman did not participate), the Court affirmed, as modified, the decision of the Appellate Division that upheld the Law Division's imposition of FLS sanctions against the Borough....

The "Castle Doctrine"

State v. Bragg, ___ N.J. ___ (2025). A jury found defendant guilty of twelve charged counts, including attempted murder, kidnapping, aggravated assault, terroristic threats, possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose, endangering, and two lesser-included offenses of harassment. Some of those charges involved the use of deadly force. Persons may not use deadly force if the can retreat with complete safety. But under the "castle doctrine," an exception to the general rule, a person "is not obliged to retreat from his dwelling, unless he was the initial aggressor." N.J.S.A. 2C:3-4(b)(2)(b)(i). That doctrine derives from the common law....

No Arbitrariness in Rejection of Public Construction Bid That Failed to Include a Properly Signed, Required Consent of Surety

In the Matter of Protest Filed by El Sol Contracting and Construction Corp., Contract T100.638, ___ N.J. ___ (2025). This public bidding case resulted in a 5-2 split at the Supreme Court, the first non-unanimous ruling of the current Term. Justice Hoffman wrote the majority opinion, while Justice Fasciale authored the dissent for himself and Justice Pierre-Louis....