The last seven days, an especially busy period for me, featured one Supreme Court opinion and two published Appellate Division decisions. Here are summaries of those rulings:
M.A. v. J.H.M., ___ N.J. ___ (2025). Justice Noriega’s opinion for a unanimous Court stated the question in this case as follows: “whether a defendant in a Prevention of Domestic Violence Act (PDVA) final restraining order (FRO) hearing may invoke the privilege against self-incrimination and, if so, whether the court may draw an adverse inference from his silence.” The trial court held that defendant could not invoke the privilege and that any refusal to testify would result in an adverse inference. Defendant sought leave to appeal, the Appellate Division denied it, but the Supreme Court granted leave, reversed, and remanded for further proceedings.
Justice Noriega said that “[i]n the unique setting of an FRO hearing, the traditional civil-criminal dichotomy must yield to the realities presented. Although housed in the Civil Part, FRO hearings involve a search for evidence of criminal conduct. Accordingly, the protections of the Fifth Amendment must be meaningfully applied in the FRO context.”
But the Court declined to “permit a defendant to invoke a blanket privilege as to all testimony in a PDVA hearing. Instead, the privilege must be asserted on a question-by-question basis, and the defendant must have reasonable cause to apprehend danger from a direct answer.” On remand, the Court said, “if plaintiff chooses to call defendant to testify, the court is to conduct an analysis each time defendant invokes the privilege -- should he choose to do so -- to determine whether the question posed requires defendant to speak to a criminal matter. If so, the court must permit defendant to refuse to answer and must not draw an adverse inference from that choice.”
Graziadei v. Capital Health System, Inc., ___ N.J. Super. ___ (App. Div. 2025). Judge Paganelli wrote the panel’s opinion in this Law Against Discrimination (“LAD”) case. The matter came to the Appellate Division following the Law Division’s issuance of three orders holding that the court lacked subject matter jurisdiction over the case. That court said that plaintiff was required to bring her LAD claim before defendant Recovery and Monitoring Program of New Jersey (“RAMP”), to which she had been referred after a breathalyzer test showed her blood alcohol level to be over the legal limit as a result of alcohol consumption the previous night. The Law Division said that RAMP had exclusive jurisdiction and that plaintiff had to exhaust her remedies by filing any complaint with RAMP instead of a court.
After the breathalyzer incident, plaintiff was suspended from her managerial job with defendant Capital Health and had to comply with RAMP’s recovery procedures in order to return to that managerial position. Ultimately, however, plaintiff was told she would not be returning to that job. She filed an LAD suit in court, alleging that she suffered from alcoholism and had been discriminated against on that basis.
The panel reversed the Law Division’s ruling. The LAD itself states that “[a]ny person claiming to be aggrieved . . . may initiate suit in Superior Court . . . without first filing a complaint” in another venue. Plaintiff was not “required to pursue an appeal directly to the Appellate Division or exhaust administrative remedies in pursuit of LAD relief. Instead, she had the right to file a complaint in the Law Division, which she did.” And plaintiff did not waive her statutory right to sue by participating in RAMP or otherwise. The panel remanded the case for further proceedings.
Katz v. Keshet Starr, ___ N.J. Super. ___ (App. Div. 2025). This was an “Appellate Division Oral Argument of the Week” when it was argued on May 15, 2025. As discussed in that post, and to use Judge Mawla’s words in his opinion for the Appellate Division today, defendants “appeal[ed] from an April 4, 2024 order denying their motion to reopen this case to pursue their claim for counsel fees, costs, and expenses under the Uniform Public Expression Protection Act (UPEPA), N.J.S.A. 2A:53A-49, after plaintiff Allen J. Satz voluntarily dismissed his complaint against them.” The case implicated Rules 4:37-1(a), regarding dismissal, and 4:50-1(f), which addresses reopening of judgments.
Finding persuasive the decision on “a similar fact pattern” in Jacobson v. Clack, 309 A.3d 571 (D.C. 2024), Judge Mawla held that the UPEPA “does not confine the definition of whether a defendant has prevailed to those instances where there is court-ordered relief in their favor.” Rather, “[t]he plain language of the UPEPA convinces us the Legislature did not condition the ability to seek fees, costs, and expenses on a court-initiated dismissal of a SLAPP suit.” The Appellate Division reversed and remanded the case for further proceedings in which defendants could pursue their claims for fees, costs, and expenses.