On December 4, 1973, the Supreme Court decided Mayflower Sec. Co. v. Bureau of Securities, 64 N.J. 85 (1973). The Bureau of Securities had suspended the registration of Mayflower, a broker-dealer, for twenty days due to two violations of New Jersey statute and rules. The violations were (1) employing an unregistered agent, and (2) failing to possess certain customer transaction records that Mayflower was required to keep. The Appellate Division affirmed the suspension.

The Supreme Court granted review and reversed and remanded for further proceedings by a 6-1 vote. Writing for the Court, Justice Hall noted that Mayflower admitted that it had employed the agent while he was unregistered. But the record showed that the agent and Mayflower both believed that the agent had been registered. The law required the Bureau to have found a willful violation, but the Bureau made no such finding. And the Court found that a suspension for a recordkeeping violation was too severe. The Court remanded that issue for further proceedings. Justice Pashman dissented in part, stating that the Court should have ended the matter by imposing a reprimand, rather than prolonging the case by remanding it to the Bureau.

All that seems relatively mundane. But the Court’s opinion has been cited over 900 times by New Jersey courts, according to Lexis, plus other citations elsewhere. The reason is that the opinion contains fundamental statements of the standard of review of agency actions, standards (cleaned up in the quote below)that have continued to be invoked as recently as October 2024:

“As to state agency findings, the role of the appellate court is that of determining whether the findings made could reasonably have been reached on sufficient credible evidence present in the record, considering the proofs as a whole, with due regard to the opportunity of the one who heard the witnesses to judge of their credibility and with due regard also to the agency’s expertise where such expertise is a pertinent factor. The appellate application of this standard requires far more than a perfunctory review; it calls for careful and principled consideration of the agency record and findings in the manner outlined in State v. Johnson, 42 N.J. 146, 161-162 (1964). An appellate tribunal is, however, in no way bound by the agency’s interpretation of a statute or its determination of a strictly legal issue. As far as review of agency imposed sanctions is concerned, there is no doubt of a court’s power of review under the tests of illegality, arbitrariness or abuse of discretion and of its power to impose a lesser or different penalty in appropriate cases.”

Not many opinions are still cited 51 years after their issuance. This ruling is one of them, and it may well still be cited another 51 years from now.