The bane of every appellate practitioner’s existence is the dreaded deficiency notice from the Appellate Division. Last night’s meeting of the New Jersey State Bar Association’s Appellate Practice Committee included a discussion of the most common deficiencies in briefs and appendices submitted to the Appellate Division. That discussion was based on information from the Clerk’s office. Here is the list of most common deficiencies: No “Table of Judgments, Orders and Rulings Being Appealed” with references to the location in the appendix of any such items....

McRae v. New Jersey Transit Bus Operations, Inc., 2016 N.J. Super. Unpub. LEXIS 1598 (App. Div. July 8, 2016).  Appellate advocates like to write in ways that make an impact.  But sometimes they can go too far.  In today’s non-precedential, per curiam opinion in this appeal from a labor arbitration ruling, Judges Fisher and Fasciale expressed displeasure with language used in the appellant’s briefing. The panel first quoted language from appellant’s briefing that, in at least two places, substituted other language for the statutory language relating to appeals of...

Mammaro v. New Jersey Div. of Child Protection & Permanency, 814 F.3d 164 (3d Cir. 2016).  In this case, plaintiff brought a civil rights case against the New Jersey Division of Child Protection and Permanency (“the Division”), supervisors and case workers from the Division, and others.  Among other things, she asserted that the Division had denied her substantive due process rights as a parent by temporarily removing her child from her custody. The Division moved to dismiss.  The District Court granted that motion in most respects, but denied it as to the substantive due...