The Supreme Court Civil Practice Committee just issued its 2020 report about proposed (and rejected) amendments to the New Jersey Court Rules. The full report is available here. Comments on that report are due by March 20, 2020. There are many substantive changes in the proposed rules, which make this report required reading. But there is only one such change proposed in the Part 2 appellate rules, and it affects only criminal matters, and only a limited subset of those. There are also a few “housekeeping amendments” proposed, including changes to Rules 2:2-3, 2:9-3, and 2:9-10....

State v. Faulcon, ___ N.J. Super. ___ (App. Div. 2020). Judge Koblitz did not leave readers in suspense about the outcome of her opinion for the Appellate Division today. Her first sentence says “We hold that defense counsel who represented a State witness who was questioned in the investigation of a murder may not then represent the defendant in the same case.” The Appellate Division’s ruling today reversed a decision of the Law Division that had found that defense counsel’s former representation of the witness was not directly adverse and did not materially limit...

Papera v. Pennsylvania Quarried Bluestone Co., ___ F.3d ___ (3d Cir. 2020). Plaintiffs and defendants reached what was believed to be a settlement of their case. At plaintiffs’ request, the District Court entered a dismissal order. That order said that he case was dismissed and gave the parties 60 days to provide a settlement agreement for court approval or move to reopen the case. A minute entry, though not the order, stated that the dismissal was “without prejudice.” When the parties neither submitted a settlement agreement nor moved to reopen, the District Court closed...