Following this post about Justice Fernandez-Vina’s retirement earlier today, Chief Justice Rabner this afternoon issued the following statement, available here: “Under the State Constitution and the rules of the Court, the Chief Justice has discretion to assign the Appellate Division judge who is senior in length of service to serve temporarily in the Supreme Court. See N.J. Const. art. VI, § 2, ¶ 1; R. 2:13-2(a). Since the adoption of the 1947 Constitution, Governors have abided by the tradition that no more than four members of the Supreme Court can be affiliated with a single...

Yesterday, Justice Fernandez-Vina turned seventy years old. That is the mandatory retirement age for judges, which Justice O’Hern, for whom I clerked, referred to as “the age of constitutional senility.” Accordingly, Justice Fernandez-Vina’s service on the Supreme Court has come to an end. Governor Murphy has not nominated anyone to take Justice Fernandez-Vina’s seat. If Chief Justice Rabner opts to fill that seat temporarily by promoting an Appellate Division judge, as was done when Judge Fuentes was tapped to fill the seat vacated by Justice LaVecchia (a...

Last week just flew by. So, belatedly, here are summaries of the week’s published opinions by the Supreme Court and the Appellate Division: Graphnet, Inc. v. Retarus, Inc., ___ N.J. ___ (2022). This unanimous opinion by Justice Fernandez-Vina involved nominal damages and remittitur in a defamation case. Without objection, the jury was given a charge based on Model Civil Jury Charge 8.46D. That Model Charge was internally contradictory as to whether nominal damages could be awarded to compensate plaintiff. A jury awarded $0 in compensatory damages and $800,000 in nominal damages. The...