To date, 2022 has not been kind to this blog. Down for a period of time due to malware, and then only partially restored, the blog is now fully ready for the new year. But the New Jersey appellate law world did not stop during that time. Here are some summaries of developments, decisional and otherwise, since January 1: The legislative term expired, and with it Governor Murphy’s nomination of Rachel Wainer Apter to fill Justice LaVecchia’s seat on the Supreme Court. After the new legislative term began, the Governor announced that he would renominate her for the seat. There is...

Kravitz v. Murphy, ___ N.J. Super. ___ (App. Div. 2021); Johnson v. McClellan, ___ N.J. Super. ___ (App. Div. 2021). The Kravitz case, in which Judge Hoffman authored the panel’s opinion, involves another Executive Order issued by Governor Murphy as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. This one was Executive Order No. 128, which authorized residential tenants to use their security deposits to pay rent. Individuals and businesses that own or manage leased residential premises challenged the Executive Order on several grounds. Those grounds included the argument that the Executive Order...

M.F. v. JONAH (Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing f/k/a Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality), _2021 N.J. Super. LEXIS ______ (App. Div. 2021). [Disclosure: I argued this appeal for the successful plaintiffs]. In June 2015, after several years of litigation and a three-week trial, a jury found that defendants had violated the New Jersey Consumer Fraud Act, N.J.S.A. 56:8-1 et seq. (“CFA”). As the Appellate Division’s per curiam opinion today summarized, “plaintiffs [had] filed suit, alleging that defendants had engaged in deceptive and fraudulent...