Opinion Summaries

          The court considers whether a police officer, who walked onto the driveway of a home without permission or a warrant, was lawfully there when he observed illegal narcotics in a hole in the home's front porch.  Because the driveway was part of the home's curtilage, the court holds that the officer conducted an unlawful search and his subsequent observation of contraband in the hole in the porch did not satisfy the plain-view exception.  Accordingly, the court reverses the trial court's denial of defendant's motion to suppress the seized contraband. 

          Plaintiff, a fully commissioned real estate salesperson, alleged on behalf of himself and a putative class of those similarly situated that defendant, a licensed real estate broker, had violated the Wage Payment Law (WPL), N.J.S.A. 34:11-4.1 to -4.14.  This court's prior opinion, Kennedy v. Weichert Co., No. A-0518-19 (App. Div. July 2, 2021), affirmed the trial court's order:  denying defendant's motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim; and declaring pursuant to Hargrove v. Sleepy's, LLC, 220 N.J. 289, 302 (2015), that the "ABC test," N.J.S.A. 43:21-19(i)(6)(A), (B), and (C), applied to determine plaintiff's employment status as an employee or independent contractor.

         The Supreme Court granted defendant's motion for leave to appeal but then remanded the matter for this court to consider recent amendments to the Real Estate Brokers and Salesmen Act (the Brokers Act), N.J.S.A. 45:15-1 to -29.5, enacted after this court's prior opinion.

         On remand, the court concluded the recent amendments foreclosed application of the ABC test to determine the employment status of fully commissioned real estate salespersons.  The court also concluded that pursuant to binding precedent from the Court, the written agreement between the parties did not, as a matter of law, define plaintiff's status.  See, e.g., MacDougall v. Weichert, 144 N.J. 380, 388 (1996).

         However, given the paucity of the record, the court declined to adopt a specific test to apply in deciding plaintiff's status pending "the development of a more complete record that permits exposition of the actual business relationship between the parties."

    In their complaint, plaintiffs alleged defendant falsely advertised clothing at two of its Aeropostale stores as being discounted when, in fact, according to plaintiffs, the clothing had never been sold in those stores at a higher price. Plaintiffs asserted that this "markup to markdown" practice violated both the Consumer Fraud Act, N.J.S.A. 56:8-1 to -227, and the Truth in Consumer Contract, Warranty, and Notice Act (the Truth Act), N.J.S.A. 56:12-14 to -18. The trial judge dismissed the complaint for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted, mainly because the judge determined plaintiffs failed to allege an ascertainable loss.
    Plaintiffs' ascertainable-loss theory – to use a simple example – is that defendant offered an item that never sold for anything more than $50, at a 50% discount below a new $100 price tag. Defendant successfully argued in the trial court that there was no ascertainable loss because plaintiffs purchased a $50 item for $50. The court rejected this and held, among other things, that the facts alleged an ascertainable loss because they alleged the discount was illusory and plaintiffs did not receive the benefit of the bargain because one element of the bargain was a 50% discount.
    Judge Berdote Byrne filed a concurring opinion.
 

          A public employer appealed from two Chancery Division orders denying its request to restrain a grievance arbitration filed by the union.  The issue before the court was whether a union grievance based on language from an expired collective negotiations agreement is arbitrable when a successor collective negotiations agreement clearly and unambiguously addresses the disputed issue raised in the grievance.  The court concluded that the language contained in the successor collective agreement superseded the language in the expired agreement.  The language in the successor agreement limited compensation for work performed during a weather-related State of Emergency declared by the Governor, contrary to the union's interpretation the language applied to COVID-19.  Since the grievance was not within the scope of the successor agreement implemented after impasse, it was not arbitrable.  The court reversed the orders requiring grievance arbitration.

Plaintiff, Shlomo Hyman, is a rabbi formerly employed by defendants as a Judaica studies teacher.  After an investigation concluded defendant had engaged in behavior that violated Orthodox Jewish standards of conduct, defendants terminated him.  Defendants then sent an email to the parents of the Yeshiva students informing them that Rabbi Hyman would not be returning as "[his] conduct had been neither acceptable nor consistent with how a rebbe in our Yeshiva should interact with students." Plaintiff alleged the communication defamed him and served to label him as a pedophile, impairing his future employment prospects.

Plaintiff now appeals from an April 16, 2021 order granting defendants' motion for summary judgment dismissing his claim for defamation based on the ministerial and ecclesiastic abstention doctrines.  Plaintiff argues the court erred in dismissing his defamation claim because the ministerial exception recognized in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church & Sch. v. EEOC, 565 U.S. 171, 181 (2012) applies only to employment discrimination claims, and because further discovery was required to determine whether the motivation behind the dissemination of a letter concerning the termination was ecclesiastic in nature.

The court affirmed the dismissal of the lawsuit, concluding, as a matter of first impression, that the ministerial exception operates to bar any tort claim provided (1) the injured party is a minister formerly employed by a religious institution and (2) the claims are related to the religious institution's employment decision.  Because both conditions are satisfied in this case, the ministerial exception alone bars plaintiff's defamation claim.  Therefore, the court found it unnecessary to address whether the ecclesiastic abstention doctrine was an independent basis to dismiss the action.

          In this appeal of an order compelling arbitration, the court held that the requirement imposed by Atalese v. U.S. Legal Services Group, L.P., 219 N.J. 430 (2014) – that, to be enforceable, an arbitration provision must contain an express waiver of the right to seek relief in a court of law – was not intended to apply to sophisticated commercial litigants possessing comparatively equal bargaining power.

Defendant contends he was subjected to discriminatory policing when he was stopped and frisked based on the be-on-the-lookout (BOLO) description of the person who committed an armed robbery in the vicinity minutes earlier.  The BOLO alert described the robber as a Black male wearing a dark raincoat.  However, the victim did not provide the race of the perpetrator when she reported the crime.  The State acknowledges it does not know why the police dispatcher assumed the robber was Black.

The court address three issues of first impression.  As a threshold matter, the court holds that decisions made and actions taken by a dispatcher can be attributed to police for purposes of determining whether a defendant has been subjected to unlawful discrimination in violation of Article I, Paragraphs 1 and 5 of the New Jersey Constitution. 

Second, the court holds that "implicit bias" can be a basis for establishing a prima facie case of police discrimination under the burden-shifting paradigm adopted in State v. Segars, 172 N.J. 481 (2002).  Reasoning that the problem of implicit bias in the context of policing is both real and intolerable, the court holds evidence that supports an inference of implicit bias shifts a burden of production to the State to provide a race-neutral explanation.  The State's inability to offer a race-neutral explanation for the dispatcher's assumption that the robbery was committed by a Black man constitutes a failure to rebut the presumption of unlawful discrimination under Segars.

Third, the court addresses whether and in what circumstances the independent source and inevitable discovery exceptions to the exclusionary rule apply to the suppression remedy for a violation of Article I, Paragraphs 1 and 5.  After balancing the cost of suppression against the need to deter discriminatory policing and uphold public confidence in the judiciary's commitment to safeguard equal protection rights, the court concludes the independent source doctrine does not apply in these circumstances.  That exception allows a reviewing court to redact unlawfully obtained information to determine whether the remaining information is sufficient to justify a search.  The court concludes that any such redaction remedy would undermine the deterrence of discriminatory policing and send a message to the public that reviewing courts are permitted to essentially disregard an equal protection violation so long as police also relied on information that was lawfully disseminated.  The court reasons that if simple redaction were permitted in these circumstances, the independent source exception might swallow the exclusionary rule.   

With respect to the inevitable discovery doctrine, the court holds it may apply in racial discrimination cases only if the State establishes by clear and convincing evidence that the discriminatory conduct was not flagrant.  Because the State concedes it does not know why the dispatcher assumed the robber was Black, it cannot meet that burden.  The court, therefore, reverses the denial of defendant's motion to suppress.   

Tax Court:  New Jersey State Firemen’s Association v. Dir., Div. of Taxation, Philadelphia Contributionship Ins. Co., Germantown Insurance Co., Greater New York Mutual Ins. Co., and Strathmore Ins. Co., Docket No. 000151-2019, opinion by Sundar, P.J.T.C., decided January 30, 2023.  For plaintiff - Michael E. Sullivan (Parker McCay, P.A., attorney); for defendant, Dir., Div. of Taxation - Michael J. Duffy (Matthew J. Platkin, Attorney General of New Jersey, attorney), for remaining defendants and intervenor Strathmore Ins. Co. - Michael A. Guariglia and Jamie Zug (McCarter & English, LLP, attorney).

Held: Defendant, Division of Taxation’s (“Taxation”) decision via its web-published Notice in 2016, to extend the statutory cap on premiums applied when computing the insurance premium tax (IPT) for domestic and foreign companies, in calculating the fire insurance premium tax (FIPT) paid to plaintiff by foreign insurers, is contrary to the plain language and intent of the FIPT statute, N.J.S.A 54:18-1, thus is not entitled to any deference.  Its interpretation of the provision in N.J.S.A. 54:18A-2(a) that the FIPT is considered “a part of” the “payable” IPT as requiring the cap to apply in computing the FIPT is unreasonable because, (a) since 1945, this provision has been interpreted to simply mean that the IPT statute requires a credit for the FIPT paid so that a foreign insurer does not pay a tax on fire insurance premiums twice, and (b) it results in plaintiff receiving less than the mandated 2% FIPT on “all of the” fire insurance premiums earned in New Jersey.  The cap on premiums for purposes of computing the IPT need not, and should not, be extended in computing the FIPT unless the Legislature acts to amend the respective statutes.

Due to this holding, the court did not need to consider plaintiff’s arguments that Taxation’s decision violated the Administrative Procedures Act, or Taxation’s arguments that its Notice, as a public guidance document should be upheld under the temporary validity doctrine until it formally promulgates and finalizes regulations reflecting its changed position as to FIPT computation.  

The court granted NJSFA’s motion for partial summary judgment, invalidated the Notice, and denied Taxation’s motion for summary judgment.
 

Defendant, Smith & Wesson, appeals from a June 30, 2021 Chancery Division order directing it to respond to a subpoena issued the Attorney General and the Acting Director of the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs.  Defendant also appeals a second June 30, 2021, Chancery Division order denying its cross-motion to dismiss, stay, or quash the subpoena. 

Faced with defendant's first-filed federal complaint against plaintiffs' motion to quash the subpoena, and with plaintiffs' subsequently filed order to show cause to enforce the subpoena, the Chancery Division judge assumed jurisdiction, finding special equities which justified avoiding the first-filed doctrine.  The judge then found the subpoena valid.  Defendant appealed, arguing the judge erred by misapplying the first-filed doctrine and by rejecting its constitutional attacks on the subpoena.   

The court held that:  special equities exist which support avoidance of the first filed doctrine; NAACP v. Alabama does not require resolution of defendant's constitutional claims at this stage of the litigation; defendant's federal constitutional claims are not ripe for consideration; and the subpoena is valid.

Affirmed.

A heightened discovery standard governs a defendant’s motion for pre-incident mental health records from a sexual assault victim. The Court establishes the standard applicable to a formally filed motion and also outlines a less formal process through which defendants may make requests for discovery of the pre-incident mental health records of an alleged sexual assault victim by letter to the prosecutor’s office. So that the new procedural and analytical framework can be applied in this case, the Court vacates the orders under review and remands the matter for further proceedings.

Defendant was initially charged with carjacking.  While he was awaiting trial, he sent a letter to the victim's home address, urging her to reconsider her identification of him as the robber.  That resulted in an additional charge of witness tampering.

The court rejects defendant's contention that the witness tampering statute, N.J.S.A. 2C:28-5(a), is overbroad and impermissibly vague on its face.  A person commits witness tampering if he or she knowingly engages in conduct which a reasonable person would believe would cause a witness or informant to do one or more specified actions, such as testify falsely or withhold testimony.  Defendant contends the "reasonable person" feature renders the statute unconstitutional and, to avoid constitutional infirmity, the statute must be construed to require the State to prove he knew his conduct would cause a prohibited result. 

First addressing defendant's overbreadth challenge, the court reaffirms that preventing the intimidation of, and interference with, potential witnesses or informers in criminal matters is an important governmental objective.  The court also notes a defendant who is awaiting trial for a violent crime has no First Amendment right to communicate directly with the victim.  Were it otherwise, a court setting the conditions of pretrial release under the Criminal Justice Reform Act, N.J.S.A. 2A:162-15 to -26, might be foreclosed from imposing a "no contact" order.  The court concludes the witness tampering statute is not overbroad weighing the importance of the exercise of speech against the gravity and probability of harm resulting from that speech.

With respect to defendant's vagueness challenge, the court declines to embrace a new rule that would categorically prohibit the Legislature from using a reasonable-person test to determine a defendant's culpability.  The court rejects the argument that the "reasonable person" feature in the witness tampering statute is analytically indistinguishable from the portion of the bias intimidation statute, N.J.S.A. 2C:16-1(a)(3), that was struck down on vagueness grounds in State v. Pomianek, 221 N.J. 66 (2015).  The invalidated portion of the bias intimidation statute employed a subjective test under which a defendant's culpability was determined from the perspective of the specific victim who was targeted.  That led the Supreme Court to conclude that "guilt may depend on facts beyond the knowledge of the defendant or not readily ascertainable by him [or her]."  Pomianek, 221 N.J. at 89.

The "reasonable person" standard employed in the witness tampering statute, in contrast, does not account for, much less depend on, what the victim actually perceived or believed.  Rather, the witness tampering statute uses an objective standard, effectively eliminating the concern expressed in Pomianek regarding idiosyncratic personal characteristics of the victim about which a defendant might be unaware. 

The court also notes the bias intimidation statute employed a convoluted culpability provision that focused on the victim's speculation as to the defendant's purpose.  That formulation had not been used in any preexisting statute and was never replicated in New Jersey or any other jurisdiction.  The objective "reasonable person" formulation employed in the witness tampering statute, in contrast, appears throughout the New Jersey Code of Criminal Justice.

Defendants – an attorney and law firm – have a client that produced a report, which asserts plaintiffs unlawfully conducted gambling-related business in forbidden countries. At the client's behest, the defendant attorneys forwarded the report to the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement. When the media learned of the report, plaintiffs sued the defendant attorneys, as well as their anonymous client and other fictitious persons, alleging defamation and other torts. Plaintiffs successfully obtained an order compelling the defendant attorneys to provide their client's identity. The court granted the defendant attorneys' motion for leave to appeal.

Although RPC 1.6 generally imposes on attorneys the ethical obligation to refrain from disclosing a client's identity without the client's consent, the court held that this interest in preserving confidentiality cannot be used to thwart justice and, in appropriate circumstances, a client's right to anonymity may be overcome in favor of an injured party's right to seek redress in our courts. To resolve the conflict between these interests, there must be a deeper examination of the claim's merits than occurred here. The court, therefore, vacated the disclosure order and remanded for the judge's inquiry into the veracity of the report that lies at the heart of plaintiffs' civil action, leaving to the judge's discretion the methodology to be employed.

The sentencing court, and not the MVC, has the appropriate jurisdiction over defendant’s motion for sentencing credit concerning the IID requirement.

The plain meaning of N.J.S.A. 59:8-3(b) dictates that child sexual abuse survivors who file a CSAA complaint against a public entity after December 1, 2019 -- even if their cause of action accrued much earlier -- need not file a TCA notice of claim before filing suit.

         In this opinion, the court addresses the novel issue of whether a party to a pending litigation may compel a non-party State agency to turn over its employees' State-issued and personal cell phones to that party's expert for forensic examination, even when the agency has already produced the relevant records from the devices.  Having reviewed this issue in light of the record, the arguments of the parties, and the applicable law, the court concludes that the trial court misapplied its discretion when it required the New Jersey Department of Health (Department) to give the cell phones to plaintiffs' expert for evaluation.  The trial court's order violated civil discovery rules and case law by requiring the production of materials not in the Department's possession, custody, or control, not allowing for privilege and confidentiality review, and being unnecessary and unduly burdensome.  The order also contravened the employees' constitutional right to privacy.  Therefore, the court reverses the trial court's order mandating that the Department turn over any State-issued or personal electronic devices for examination by plaintiffs' expert, and remands the matter for resolution of any outstanding issues relating to the completeness of the Department's response to plaintiffs' subpoena.

The court affirms Law Division orders consolidating and dismissing seven inverse condemnation actions against the Department of Environmental Protection under the entire controversy doctrine, leaving plaintiffs to their remedies in the DEP's condemnation action against their homeowners association, in which plaintiffs have been participating since 2019.

The case arises out of the State's acquisition of a perpetual storm damage reduction easement by eminent domain in the Association's unbuildable, two-and-a-half-acre beach lot along the Atlantic Ocean in Point Pleasant Beach as part of the Manasquan Inlet to Barnegat Inlet Storm Damage Reduction Project.  Plaintiffs are seven of the twenty-two homeowner members of the Association, each holding a non-exclusive easement appurtenant for recreational purposes in the Association's beach. 

When the court declared DEP had the authority to partially condemn the Association's beach for shore protection in 2016, it entered orders permitting members of the Association to present claims for severance damages allegedly caused to their homes by the partial taking of the beach lot before the condemnation commissioners.  Plaintiffs appeared at the commissioners' hearing in 2019 and have appealed from the commissioners' report and award.  They have an order in the condemnation action ensuring that among the issues to be tried to a jury will be "the separate just compensation due to each of the respective [plaintiffs] by reason of the taking . . . of property of each . . . and any damages to their respective residential lots."  Because plaintiffs' rights to separate awards for just compensation for the loss of value to their homes, if any, resulting from DEP's exercise of eminent domain as to the beach lot are fully protected through their participation in the earlier filed condemnation action, the court affirms dismissal of their inverse condemnation actions under the entire controversy doctrine.

          The court also affirms rejection of plaintiffs' claim that their recreational easements provided them the right to exclude non-Association members from the Association's beach, as neither the express wording of the easement nor the Association's reservation of the right to operate the beach commercially in a 2005 settlement of public trust litigation supports that claim.

The Court affirms as modified the judgment of the Appellate Division substantially for the reasons stated in Judge Susswein’s published opinion. The Court explains why it does not believe the Appellate Division’s proposed procedural rule is necessary.

Based on the text of the new statute and its legislative history, the Court concludes the Compassionate Release Act affords judges discretion to deny relief, in exceptional circumstances, even if the law’s medical and public safety conditions are satisfied. In individual cases, when the medical and public safety factors are met, courts can assess whether extraordinary aggravating factors exist that justify the denial of compassionate release. That high standard comports with the Legislature’s goal to make greater use of compassionate release. Absent any such circumstances, petitions for relief should be granted.

HELD: L. 2021, c. 17 (Chapter 17), effective February 22, 2021, was enacted to continue the local property tax (LPT) exemption afforded to nonprofit hospitals, and to extend the same exemption to a nonprofit hospital-owned satellite emergency facilities (SECs), even if areas of the hospital and SECs are used by/leased to, for-profit medical providers “for medical purposes related to delivery of health care services directly to the hospital,” provided that such “portion of the hospital . . . is used exclusively for hospital services.”  The nonprofit hospitals and SECs should pay an annual community service contribution (ACSC) to the municipality in which the hospital beds of a nonprofit hospital are located or where an SEC is located.  Chapter 17 also bars imposing assessments for tax years 2014 through 2020, which would moot those years’ pending tax appeals all filed because of the alleged for-profit activity conducted by the hospital and/or the for-profit medical providers on the nonprofit hospital premises.  The law was enacted to mitigate the effects of a 2015 Tax Court decision which revoked the tax exemption of a nonprofit hospital’s property based on facts that the operations/activities of the plaintiff nonprofit hospital and the for-profit, private medical providers on the hospital property were too blurred.

The court here found that (1) the ACSC is not an ultra-vires payment-in-lieu of tax program; (2) the ACSC is not a local property tax for purposes of the Uniformity Clause of the New Jersey Constitution; (3) Chapter 17 is facially constitutional and does not violate the Exemption Clause of the New Jersey Constitution; (4) Chapter 17 is not an invalid special legislation, thus also does not facially violate the Equal Protection Clause of the federal and State constitutions; and (5) Chapter 17’s retroactivity is not manifestly unjust, thus, also does not violate the Due Process Clause of the federal and State constitutions.  The court further found there are no bases for imposing an injunction against Chapter 17 under any of the factors enunciated in Crowe v. DeGioia, 90 N.J. 126, 132-34 (1983).  The court therefore dismissed the complaint with prejudice.

Based on the text of the new statute and its legislative history, the Court concludes the Compassionate Release Act affords judges discretion to deny relief, in exceptional circumstances, even if the law’s medical and public safety conditions are satisfied. In individual cases, when the medical and public safety factors are met, courts can assess whether extraordinary aggravating factors exist that justify the denial of compassionate release. That high standard comports with the Legislature’s goal to make greater use of compassionate release. Absent any such circumstances, petitions for relief should be granted.