Appellate Division opinions designated as not for publication do not often address legal issues such as whether and when a judgment under appeal is final. But today, the Appellate Division issued two opinions that touch on that subject in different contexts. Williams v. County of Middlesex, 2021 N.J. Super Unpub. LEXIS 1580 (App. Div. July 28, 2021), was a suit by plaintiff corrections officers against a number of defendants. Plaintiffs alleged that they had been physically and emotionally injured, and had been subjected to disciplinary charges, after they had intervened in a fight between a...

United States v. Brace, ___ F.3d ___ (3d Cir. 2021). Every so often, attorney conduct is so egregiously bad that it results in a published opinion, and a lesson to other attorneys. This opinion by Judge Bibas is one of those. This was a suit against defendants for allegedly violating the Clean Water Act by, among other things, digging up dirt, rocks, and other material and dumping it back into defendants’ wetlands property without a permit. In defending the case, defense counsel did just about every wrong thing that one can do. The result was that the District Court struck...

Lawson v. Dewar, ___ N.J. Super. ___ (App. Div. 2021). This opinion by Judge Fisher was made on summary disposition, a rare occurrence in our appellate courts. In the first paragraph of the opinion, Judge Fisher emphasized that the opinion was written, and published, “chiefly to point out commonly misunderstood distinctions between motions seeking reconsideration of final orders and motions seeking reconsideration of interlocutory orders” (emphases by Judge Fisher). The facts of the case, though important to the parties, are not significant to the legal principles expressed, and...