Muracco v. Township of Washington, 2010 WL 5376867 (App. Div. Nov. 16, 2010). Courts have repeatedly made clear that documents cannot be attached to a brief, but must be appended to a certification or affidavit made on personal knowledge, in accordance with Rule 1:6-6. E.g., Sellers v. Schonfeld, 270 N.J. Super. 424, 428-29 (App. Div. 1993). In this case, the Appellate Division found that the defendant’s multiple failures to comply with Rule 1:6-6 were harmless and did not call for reversal of the summary judgment entered in favor of the defendant. In each instance, either the authenticity of the documents in question was admitted by the plaintiff, the document affected only an issue that the plaintiff had admitted in his Verified Complaint, or it was clear from the circumstances that the plaintiff had supplied the document to defense counsel.
The court was not wrong to view this issue realistically in this particular case. But practitioners should not view this as license to ignore Rule 1:6-6.