NJ Appellate Law Blog

Criminal Defendant Can Present Expert Testimony as to Voluntariness or Reliability of His Confession

The first substantive post of this fourth year of this blog is another guest post on a criminal law decision by my colleague Jeffrey A. Shooman, another member of my...

The Third Circuit Speaks About Rule 404(b) "Prior Bad Act" Evidence

Here is another guest post from Jeffrey A. Shooman, who was then my colleague at Lite DePalma Greenberg, LLC, on an important criminal law decision of the Third Circuit: United...

"Courting Justice: 10 New Jersey Cases That Shook the Nation"

Yesterday's Star-Ledger contained a review of this book, which is edited by Paul L. Tractenberg and published by Rutgers University Press. That review is available here. According to the review, the...

The Appellate Division Announces a New Right to Counsel in Certain Post-Conviction Relief Proceedings

State v. Quixal, 431 N.J. Super. 502 (App. Div. 2013). Today's post is a guest post by Jeffrey A. Shooman, one of my colleagues in the Appellate Practice Group at Lite DePalma...

1 2 3 45

In Primary Election Dispute, the Supreme Court Declines to Rewrite Election Laws to Create Remedies Not Afforded by Those Statutes

Johnson v. Wilkerson, ___ N.J. ___ (2025). Chief Justice Rabner's opinion for a unanimous Court follows on the Court's September 19, 2025 Order that upheld a ruling by Judge Sabatino in an emergent appeal by a candidate for a Roselle council seat. That Order stated that an opinion would follow....

Appellate Division Oral Argument of the Week: Two Well-Known Law Firms Face Off Against Each Other, as Parties

Tomorrow, October 28, judges on Part E of the Appellate Division will hear oral argument in Nagel Rice, LLP v. Starkey, Kelly, Kenneally, Cunningham & Turnbach. It is relatively rare for one law firm to sue another, but that has occurred here....

Two Certified Question Cases From the Third Circuit, and a Related Grant of Leave to Appeal, for the Supreme Court

The Supreme Court announced that it has granted review in three new matters. Two of them involve questions certified to the Court by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, under Rule 2:12A. It is relatively rare for the Court to receive, and rarer for it to grant, petitions to decide certified questions, and it appears unprecedented for the Court to have granted review in two such cases at the same time. The other new case is a grant of leave to appeal to address one of the same issues presented in one of the certified question matters....

Still Another Committee on Character Anniversary

This blog has in the past noted anniversaries of Supreme Court decisions involving appeals from the Court's Committee on Character, on which I served for fifteen years. Today is another such anniversary, as on October 22, 1997, the Court decided In re Triffin, 151 N.J. 510 (1997)....