On this date in 1993, the Supreme Court decided In re Peterman, 134 N.J. 201 (1993). [Disclosure: I was a member of the Supreme Court Committee on Character for fifteen years, including during 1993, but I had no involvement with this case. I currently represent Bar applicants in connection with Committee on Character applications and proceedings.] The Court voted 5-2 to affirm the Committee on Character’s recommendation to admit this candidate to the New Jersey Bar. Peterman had been a lawyer in Pennsylvania. He had been disbarred there in 1985. The reason for that was, as the Supreme...

On this date in 1984, the Supreme Court decided two cases, Fairlawn Shopper, Inc. v. Director, Div. of Taxation, 98 N.J. 64 (1984), and Today Newspapers, Inc. v. Director, Div. of Taxation, 98 N.J. 75 (1984). Both cases involved the question of whether publishers’ purchases of printing services and materials for “pennysavers” (also known as “shoppers”), which are newspapers that are distributed for free and whose “revenues are derived almost entirely from advertising,” were subject to sales tax. That issue had been the subject of prior Appellate...

Orientale v. Jennings, ___ N.J. ___ (2019). As Justice Albin’s opinion for a unanimous Court today described, remittitur and additur (the ability of a trial judge to reduce or increase a jury verdict that is “so grossly excessive [remittitur] or inadequate [additur] that it shocks the judicial conscience) have been part of American law since a decision by Justice Story in 1822. By 1917, both were fixtures of New Jersey law. Here is how Justice Albin described the traditional remittitur and additur practice: Under our common law jurisprudence, when a jury’s damages award is so...