Borough of Carteret v. Firefighters Mutual Benevolent Ass’n, Local 67, ___ N.J. ___ (2021). Under longstanding Supreme Court of New Jersey precedent, an arbitrator’s interpretation of a labor contract is to be upheld as long as that interpretation is “reasonably debatable.” In today’s ruling by the Court, a unanimous opinion by Justice Pierre-Louis, the Justices reversed a decision of the Appellate Division that had rejected an arbitrator’s interpretation. The Court restored the ruling of the Chancery Division that had upheld the arbitrator’s...

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...

The Supreme Court announced that it has taken up two more cases. One of those is a criminal appeal, State v. Clark, which is before the Court as of right due to a dissent in the Appellate Division. The question presented, as phrased by the Supreme Court Clerk’s office, is ” Did the cumulative effect of errors deprive defendant of a fair trial?” After defendant was convicted of murder and unlawful possession of a weapon, he appealed to the Appellate Division. In an unpublished per curiam opinion, that court ruled, by a 2-1 vote, that cumulative trial errors had rendered the...