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

Appellate Practice Tips from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals

A panel of three Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals judges offered their tips for appellate practitioners. Those perspectives are available here. Many of the tips are, or should be, familia...

"The Song Remains the Same": There's No Automatic Right to Appeal an Interlocutory Order, and Improper Appeals Will be Dismissed

House of Fire Christian Church v. Clifton Bd. of Adj., 426 N.J. Super. 157 (App. Div. 2012). The Appellate Division has repeatedly admonished parties, attorneys, and trial level judges that it is improper to...

Three Appellate Practice Nuggets from the NJSBA Annual Meeting

The NJSBA Annual Meeting in Atlantic City featured a program today on the "nuts and bolts" of appellate practice. The panel of speakers was headed by Judges Carchman and Messano....

"Are Oral Arguments Worth Arguing About?"

Yesterday's New York Times contained a column by Adam Liptak, who covers the Supreme Court of the United States, entitled "Are Oral Arguments Worth Arguing About?" That column makes the...

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...

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...

Party Lost the Right to Employ an Arbitration Clause by Waiting Too Long to Invoke It

Cole v. Jersey City Medical Center, 425 N.J. Super. 48 (App. Div. 2012). Plaintiff, a nurse anesthetist at Jersey Medical Center, sued the Medical Center and her immediate employer, Liberty Anesthesia Associates...

The Third Circuit Applies Judicial Estoppel

Macfarlan v. Ivy Hill SNF, LLC, 675 F.3d 266 (3d Cir. 2012). "Judicial estoppel is a ‘judge-made doctrine that seeks to prevent a litigant from asserting a position inconsistent with one that...

A Rare Opinion Granting a Motion for Summary Disposition

Spinelli v. Echeverry Industries, LLC, 2012 WL 370666 (App. Div. Feb. 7, 2012). Rule 2:8-3 authorizes parties on appeal to move for summary disposition of that appeal at any time....

Failure to Produce Original Documents Can be Spoliation (But Not in This Case)

Bull v. United Parcel Service, Inc., 665 F.3d 68 (3d Cir. 2012). "After declaring a mistrial, the District Court dismissed Laureen Bull's state-law employment discrimination case as a sanction for failing to...

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No Ethics Violation in Attorney Purchasing Another Attorney's Name as a Keyword for Internet Searches, the Supreme Court Says, With a Caveat

In re Opinion No. 735 of the Supreme Court Advisory Committee on Professional Ethics, ___ N.J. ___ (2025). [Disclosure: I represented an amicus curiae in this appeal]. As Justice Noriega said in his opinion for a 5-1 majority (Justice Pierre-Louis did not participate), this appeal "presents the narrow question of whether it is permissible under the Rules of Professional Conduct (RPC) for an attorney or law firm to purchase a competing attorney's or law firm's name as a keyword." The Court found it permissible, with a caveat. Justice Fasciale dissented....

Four Criminal Law Cases, and a Qui Tam Appeal, for the Supreme Court

The Supreme Court announced today that it has granted review in five new appeals. One of them is before the Court on leave to appeal, while in the others the Court granted certification....

The "Limited Attorney Exemption" of the Debt Adjustment and Credit Counseling Act is Held Unconstitutional as Violative of the Separation of Powers and Void for Vagueness

Anchor Law Firm, PLLC v. State of New Jersey, ___ N.J. Super. ___ (App. Div. 2025). The Debt Adjustment and Credit Counseling Act, N.J.S.A. 17:16G-1 et seq. ("DACCA"), prohibits debt adjusters in New Jersey from operating for a profit. There is an exception for attorneys not "principally engaged" (a term not defined in the statute) in debt adjustment. That exception, adopted in a 1986 amendment, replaced a prior version of the DACCA that had exempted all attorneys from its scope....

Appellate Division Oral Argument of the Week: Where a Party Files a Suit Alleged to Violate the UPEPA But Quickly Dismisses It, Can Defendants Then Get Counsel Fees Under the Statute?

On May 15, judges on Part C of the Appellate Division will hear oral argument in Satz v. Keshet Starr. Plaintiff, acting pro se, filed a defamation suit against defendants. Defendants filed an o order to show cause to dismiss the case and for attorneys' fees under the Uniform Public Expression Protection Act, N.J.S.A. 2A:53A-49 et seq. ("UPEPA"). The UPEPA, enacted in 2023, sought to make it more difficult to use the legal system as a weapon to bully individuals into silence by filing what have been known as SLAPP ("strategic lawsuits against public participation") suits....