Even as the Appellate Division wound down the number of its published opinions in the second half of August, the Third Circuit seemed to rev up its publication of opinions. From August 14 through August 29, the court published thirteen opinions. Here are summaries of some of them (for full coverage of all of the court’s activities, check out Matthew Stiegler’s CA3blog): Golden v. New Jersey Institute of Technology, ___ F.3d ___ (3d Cir. 2019). This opinion by Chief Judge Smith involved an attorneys’ fee issue under New Jersey’s Open Public Records Act, N.J.S.A....

Due to a Supreme Court brief, a major Appellate Division brief, some personal matters, and issues as to the hosting of this blog, there were no postings here for the last part of July. So this post is in the nature of a retroactive declaration of a hiatus. Hopefully, things will be (closer to) normal going forward. All that is not to say that the courts were inactive. One case in particular, in which Judge Currier wrote one of the longest and most detailed opinions of the current Term, deserves special mention. In ADP, LLC v. Kusins, ___ N.J. Super. ___ (App. Div. 2019), the Appellate...

On May 30, 2001, the Supreme Court decided Packard-Bamberger & Co. v. Collier, 167 N.J. 427 (2001). Writing for a unanimous Court, Justice Verniero held that a corporate director who had also acted as counsel to the corporation could be liable for an award of attorneys’ fees in an attorney misconduct action against him by that corporation and a shareholder. The attorney was found to have engaged in intentional misconduct by failing to disclose a third party’s offer to purchase corporate property, and by assisting another director in purchasing stock that the corporation also...