Supreme Court Opinions

Third-party defendants are subject to the contribution claims filed against them by joint tortfeasors, unless there exists a right to a dismissal of the claims against them. Here, Fernandez fails to present a meritorious right to dismissal. Fernandez is therefore an active third-party defendant who must participate at trial.

There was no abuse of discretion with respect to either the imposition of sanctions or the denial of reconsideration.

The judgment of the Appellate Division is affirmed substantially for the reasons expressed in that court’s opinion. The Court declines, however, to adopt the Appellate Division’s view that "the Compassionate Use Act intended to cause no impact on existing employment rights." See 458 N.J. Super. at 428.

Before depriving S.T. of the right to control the direction of her case and appointing a guardian to make legal decisions on her behalf, the court was required to conduct a hearing to determine whether she lacked "sufficient capacity to govern [herself] and manage [her] affairs" "by reason of mental illness or intellectual disability." See N.J.S.A. 3B:1-2; N.J.S.A. 3B:12-24; R. 4:86-4. At such a hearing, S.T. had the right to independent counsel. See R. 4:86-4(a)(7). In the absence of a guardianship hearing and a judicial finding by clear and convincing evidence that S.T. lacked the requisite mental capacity to decide how to proceed with her lawsuit, the court had no authority to accept a settlement against S.T.’s wishes.

Invoking its supervisory authority, the Court holds that if grand juries decline to indict on two prior occasions, the State must obtain advance approval from the Assignment Judge before it can submit the same case to a third grand jury. To decide whether to permit a third presentation, Assignment Judges should consider whether the State has new or additional evidence to present; the strength of the State’s evidence; and whether there has been any prosecutorial misconduct in the prior presentations. Based on the circumstances of this case, which did not violate defendant’s right to a fundamentally fair grand jury presentation, the Court affirms the judgment of the Appellate Division and declines to dismiss defendant’s indictment

The deemer statute does not incorporate by reference the basic policy’s BI level for insurers, like GEICO, to which the second sentence of N.J.S.A. 17:28-1.4 applies. From the perspective of the insurers’ obligation, the required compulsory insurance liability limits remain $15,000/$30,000. As to the equal protection claim, New Jersey insureds are the ones who have a choice to purchase less than the presumptive minimum BI amount. The obligation of in-state insurers to offer and provide that minimum is the same as the obligation imposed under the deemer statute’s second sentence on authorized insurers writing an out-of-state policy. The equal protection claim therefore falls flat.

The Court agrees with both the Tax Court and the Appellate Division that the Division properly taxed the entirety of the residence when both life interests were extinguished, and the remainder was transferred to Marita. The property’s transfer, in its entirety, took place “at or after” Mary’s death, and was appropriately taxed at its full value at that time. In light of the estate-planning mechanism used here, any other holding would introduce an intolerable measure of speculation and uncertainty in an area of law in which clarity, simplicity, and ease of implementation are paramount.

The judgment of the Appellate Division is affirmed substantially for the reasons expressed in that court’s opinion. As the Appellate Division noted, in the 2012 amendment to N.J.S.A. 34:15-15, the Legislature did not expressly address the statute of limitations. The Legislature is, of course, free to do so in the future.

Tenure is a statutory right controlled by law. The tribunals that concluded petitioner suffered no deprivation of her tenure rights engaged in legal error by labeling the position as “extracurricular” and then short-circuiting the requisite analysis based on that classification. This instructional and tenure-eligible position did not become extracurricular and tenure ineligible simply because petitioner already held tenure in another position. Petitioner met the statutory criteria for tenure and is entitled to a remedy for the violation of her right not to be removed or reduced in salary while protected by tenure for her work in the BookBinders program.

The invalidation of the retainer agreement is supported by sufficient credible evidence in the record. Although the Appellate Division’s concerns over the retainer agreement in this case are understandable, the ethical pronouncements issued in its opinion may have far-reaching and negative effects, not only on employment-law attorneys and attorneys handling fee-shifting claims, but also on their clients. Some of those pronouncements appear too broad and some unsound, and others are worthy of the deliberative process by which new ethical rules are promulgated by the Court. The Court addresses those issues under its constitutional authority to regulate the conduct of attorneys in this State, N.J. Const. art. VI, § 2, ¶ 3, and directs that an ad hoc committee be established to address the professional-responsibility issues discussed in this opinion. The Court expresses no ultimate opinion on the matters referred to the committee, which will report its recommendations to the Court.

The Directive, issued pursuant to the Court’s administrative rulemaking authority, requires a hearing and is controlling on this issue. The Court remands this matter to the Law Division to conduct a hearing on Carlstrom’s application for a carry-permit and provides guidance as to the scope of that hearing.

The circumstances of this case do not legitimize the stop. Law enforcement must have reasonable and articulable suspicion of a traffic violation, the commission of a crime, or unlawful activity before executing a traffic stop. Accordingly, the roadside statement given by defendant during the unlawful stop should have been excluded at trial, and the Court affirms the Appellate Division’s reversal of her convictions for hindering apprehension and false reporting. Because defendant’s roadside statement permeated the trial, severely affecting her credibility and ability to mount a defense to the separate burglary charge, that conviction is reversed as well.

Ramslee Motors’s lease agreement directly addressed responsibility for maintenance of the property, which includes removal of snow and ice. That duty rested solely with Ramslee Motors, whether based on the lease or common law. Ramslee Motors retained complete control over the premises where plaintiff fell and was exclusively responsible for plaintiff’s injuries. The Court declines to hold the landlord responsible for property over which it had relinquished control.

In light of the federal and state requirements to obtain a follow-up sample, the State has shown that the physical characteristics sought in this case cannot practicably be obtained by any means other than investigative detention pursuant to Rule 3:5A-1. The Court therefore reverses the judgment of the Appellate Division.

The 2018 legislation amending the Towing Act does not have retroactive effect, and the Court agrees with the Appellate Division’s construction of the pre-2018 Act. The Court affirms the Appellate Division’s thorough and thoughtful decision as to exhaustion of administrative remedies, derivative immunity, and the remand as to the Towing Act and CFA claims, all substantially for the reasons expressed in Judge Gilson’s opinion. The Court separately addresses whether plaintiffs can pursue claims under the TCCWNA and finds that plaintiffs are unable to state a claim under that statute. The Court therefore reverses the judgment of the Appellate Division on that issue but affirms as to all others.

The actions of the police amounted to the functional equivalent of interrogation. As a result, A.A. should have been advised of his Miranda rights in the presence of his mother. To hold otherwise would turn Presha and the safeguards it envisioned on their head. To address the special concerns presented when a juvenile is brought into custody, police officers should advise juveniles of their Miranda rights in the presence of a parent or guardian before the police question, or a parent speaks with, the juvenile. Officers should then let the parent and child consult in private. That approach would afford parents a meaningful opportunity to help juveniles understand their rights and decide whether to waive them. Because A.A.’s inadmissible statements comprised a substantial part of the proofs against him, a new hearing is necessary.

During the three-year interim period between passage of the amendment to the Wiretap Act in 2010 and the effective date of the Court’s Earls decision in 2013, individuals possessed a reasonable expectation of privacy in cell-phone location information cognizable under our State Constitution. As in other contexts, exceptions to the constitutional warrant requirement -- such as consent or exigent circumstances -- apply to securing cell-phone records. Therefore, in 2011, our Constitution required law-enforcement officers to obtain either a warrant or court order for cell-phone location information in accordance with the standards of N.J.S.A. 2A:156A-29 or to satisfy one of the exceptions to the warrant requirement. It also follows that, under Article I, Paragraph 7, the exclusionary rule applies to unconstitutional searches and seizures of cell-phone records. Here, the State did not obtain a warrant or court order and failed to satisfy its burden of proving that exigent circumstances justified the warrantless search, requiring suppression of defendant’s cell-phone records.