Chipola v. Flannery, ___ N.J. ___ (2025). As discussed here, this case was one of two that the Supreme Court agreed to review in its first grants of review of the current Term. The question presented was “Does a claim alleging false light invasion of privacy have a one-year statute of limitations, see Swan v. Boardwalk Regency Corp., 407 N.J. Super. 108 (App. Div 2009)?” Today, agreeing with the Law Division and the Appellate Division, the Supreme Court answered “yes.”
In his opinion for a unanimous Court, Justice Hoffman summarized the facts as follows. “Salve Chipola attended a Clearview Regional High School basketball game on January 9, 2020. During halftime, Chipola walked past two acquaintances, Sean Flannery and an unnamed individual, speaking with a member of the school staff. Later that same night, the unnamed individual called Chipola and informed him that Flannery had been speaking about Chipola, but did not share any details of the conversation.
“On January 14, 2020, Chipola returned to Clearview for another basketball game, but a police officer prevented him from entering and handed him a letter from the school, informing Chipola that he was banned from school grounds. The officer asked Chipola if he was a drug dealer and whether he had sold drugs to or purchased alcohol for students; Chipola insisted that he was not a drug dealer and denied engaging in such activities.
“Chipola suspected that Flannery’s comments at the earlier basketball game were the source of the allegation. Later that night, Chipola texted Flannery and asked him about the conversation on January 9. Flannery conceded that he made statements to the school official alleging that Chipola was a drug dealer and had provided drugs and alcohol to students.”
On December 12, 2021, nearly two years later, plaintiff sued for false light invasion of privacy. The Law Division granted a defense motion to dismiss based on the statute of limitations, since Swan had established a one-year time limit for false light claims, applying the same one-year timeframe that applies to defamation claims. The Appellate Division affirmed. The Supreme Court affirmed as well, applying de novo review to the limitations issue presented.
Justice Hoffman noted that in McGrogan v. Till, 167 N.J. 414 (2001) [Disclosure: I represented some of the successful defendants in the Supreme Court in that case], the Court had said that when statutes are silent as to the limitations period for a particular common law tort, “courts should identify the cause of action to which the tort in question is most closely aligned, and should look primarily to the conduct underlying the tort to determine commonality.” He went on to conclude that, as Swan had held, a one-year statute of limitations applied to false light claims.
There were several reasons for that result. “The conduct at the heart of both defamation and false light invasion of privacy claims is essentially the same; and holding otherwise would cause false light to engulf the tort of defamation and eradicate the narrowed one-year limitations period that is intended to balance potentially tortious behavior with free speech right.” Justice Hoffman quoted Romaine v. Kallinger, 109 N.J. 282, 294 (1988), as having recognized a “conceptual affinity” between defamation and false light, an affinity that he then detailed at some length. Moreover, applying the same statute of limitations for defamation and false light “conform[ed] with the decisions in the majority of other jurisdictions that recognize the false light cause of action.”
Finally, there were “practical reasons for applying a one-year statute of limitations to false light claims. An expansive statute of limitations for false light claims runs the risk of trivializing, if not eliminating, defamation as a tort where, as here, the alleged comment is defamatory in nature.” And “[a]llowing false light to engulf the intentionally limited one-year statute of limitations in N.J.S.A. 2A:14-3 would also run counter to the express legislative policy that gives speech the protection it needs from vexatious and financially ruinous lawsuits that might stifle and inhibit the expression of ideas that inform and enlighten the public” (citation to a prior Supreme Court case omitted). The Court rejected plaintiff’s argument that a perceived conflict between McGrogan and Rumbauskas v. Cantor, 138 N.J. 173 (1994), called for the opposite result.
For all those reasons, the Court agreed with Swan that “’[n]either law nor logic justifies’ a different statute of limitations for false light and defamation claims. The Court thus affirmed the dismissal of this case by the courts below.
