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.
In Chiaccheri v. Zurich American Ins. Co., the Third Circuit certified two questions to the Supreme Court. As phrased by the Supreme Court Clerk’s office, the question presented accepted the Third Circuit’s formulation of those questions. The question presented is, thus, “With respect to a “motor vehicle liability policy . . . that names a corporate or business entity as a named insured” under N.J.S.A. 17:28-1.1(f), what is the “maximum . . . underinsured motorist coverage available under the policy” that must be provided to “an individual employed by the corporate or business entity”; and are endorsements limiting underinsured motorist coverage to an amount less than the general third-party liability coverage limit under the same policy in violation of N.J.S.A. 17:28-1.1(f) or otherwise contrary to public policy?” The United States District Court for the District of New Jersey granted summary judgment for defendant. Plaintiff appealed to the Third Circuit, and that court certified its questions and will “retain jurisdiction of the appeal pending resolution of this certification.”
The leave to appeal case, Travieso v. Crespo, presents one of the same questions as in Chiaccheri: “With respect to a “motor vehicle liability policy . . . that names a corporate or business entity as a named insured” under N.J.S.A. 17:28-1.1(f), what is the “maximum uninsured . . . motorist coverage available under the policy” that must be provided to “an individual employed by the corporate or business entity”? A two-judge panel of the Appellate Division denied a motion for leave to appeal in an unpublished order.
The other certified question case is Atlas Data Privacy Corp. v. We Inform, LLC. There, the Third Circuit certified two questions, but the Supreme Court exercised its authority, pursuant to Rule 2:12A-4(c), to reformulate those questions. The question presented, as reformulated, is “What mental state, if any, is required to establish liability under Daniel’s Law, N.J.S.A. 56:8-166.1?” The District Court had denied a defense motion to dismiss that was based on the contentions that Daniel’s Law, which is designed to allow active or former judges, prosecutors, police officers, child-protection investigators, and immediate family living with them to stop people from sharing their home addresses and phone numbers, “facially violates the First Amendment twice over,” first, by regulating speech based on its content, which defendants claimed violated strict scrutiny, and second, by impermissibly chilling uncovered protected speech because it makes defendants liable without requiring any mens rea. The Third Circuit granted interlocutory review, heard oral argument, and will “retain jurisdiction of the appeal pending resolution of this certification.”
