NJ Appellate Law Blog

When is an Ordinance a "Zoning Ordinance"?

Shipyard Associates, L.P. v. City of Hoboken, 242 N.J. 23 (2020). [Disclosure: My firm, Lite DePalma Greenberg, LLC, represents the City of Hoboken and certain of its agencies and officials...

Stephen W. Townsend, Died April 22, 2020, at Age 75

I learned over the weekend that Stephen W. Townsend, the former Clerk of the Supreme Court had died. His obituary states that the date of his death was April 22...

45 Years Since Lind v. Schmid

On this day in 1975, the Supreme Court decided Lind v. Schmid, 67 N.J. 255 (1975). It has been cited well over one hundred times and is still a leading...

A Third Circuit Ruling in Favor of Association Standing

New Jersey Coalition of Automotive Retailers, Inc. v. Mazda Motors of America, 957 F.3d 390 (3d Cir. 2020). In Hunt v. Washington State Apple Advertising Comm'n, 432 U.S. 333 (1977),...

An Employment Law Anniversary: The "Lower Sights" Doctrine

Today is the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. It's also Administrative Professionals Day, an opportunity for attorneys to recognize how essential our non-attorney staff is to our legal practice. Today...

Back in Action

The appellate courts have not been idle since the most recent post on this blog. Opinions have been issued, the Supreme Court has taken up more cases for review, and...

2020 Law Graduates May Practice Immediately, as July Bar Exam is Cancelled, But Graduates Still Must be Certified by the Committee on Character in Order to Practice

As announced by Chief Justice Rabner here, the July Bar examination has been cancelled due to the COVID-19 situation. But that situation, the Supreme Court has concluded, after consulting with...

Where Jail Inmates Had Been Told That Their Telephone Calls Would be Monitored and Recorded, They Had No Reasonable Expectation of Privacy in Those Calls

State v. Jackson, 241 N.J. 547 (2020). In a per curiam opinion, the Supreme Court today affirmed the ruling of the Appellate Division in this case (actually, two consolidated cases),...

An Expungement Case and a "Conditional Res Ipsa Loquitur" Case for the Supreme Court

The Supreme Court announced that it has granted certification in two more cases. One arises out of a finding of child abuse and neglect. The other involves a request for...

Forfeiture of Entire Public Pension Due to Guilty Plea of Accepting $300 Bribe is Not an Unconstitutional "Excessive Fine"

State v. Anderson, 463 N.J. Super. 168 (App. Div. 2020). Defendant, formerly employed by the Jersey City Tax Assessor's office, pled guilty to a federal criminal charge of interference with...

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 495051 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…Last

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)....