Gilbert v. Stewart, ___ N.J. ___ (2021); H.C. Equities, L.P. v. County of Union, ___ N.J. ___ (2021). So far this week, the Supreme Court has issued two opinions, with one more scheduled for issuance tomorrow. Both decisions were unanimous and both reversed rulings of the Appellate Division.
Today, the Court decided Gilbert v. Stewart. Justice Fernandez-Vina wrote the opinion. This was a legal malpractice case. The Law Division granted summary judgment to defendant, finding that proximate causation was lacking. The Appellate Division affirmed. The Supreme Court’s ruling today reversed the summary judgment and remanded for further proceedings.
In summary, defendant represented plaintiff’s ex-husband, Monroe Gilbert, in the defense of a number of traffic summonses. When plaintiff and Monroe divorced, Monroe took sole possession of the family car, though it was registered in plaintiff’s name. Monroe was to change the registration to his name, but he did not do that. Monroe incurred many traffic tickets, which were mailed to plaintiff’s address, but Monroe took them out of her mailbox so that plaintiff did not see them.
Plaintiff, Monroe, and his lawyer, defendant, appeared in Municipal Court together. Though plaintiff was not defendant’s client, plaintiff said that defendant told her, as Justice Fernandez-Vina recounted, that “the optimal resolution would be for her to plead guilty to the charges because Monroe was at greater risk of license suspension due to his poor driving record, whereas plaintiff would likely only be subjected to a fine.” But plaintiff would later allege, in her malpractice case against defendant, that defendant had not told her that she would be sentenced to community service or that the guilty plea might affect her employment (about which more below). Plaintiff also said that if she had known she would have to do community service, she would never have agreed to plead guilty.
Justice Fernandez-Vina recounted that “[p]laintiff later testified that she reluctantly agreed to plead guilty and accept a fine because she wanted ‘to get this over with’ and ‘move forward with [her] life.'” Since plaintiff “fell on the sword,” as the Municipal Court judge said, the charges against Monroe were dismissed.
But plaintiff did not merely have to pay a fine. She was employed as a probation supervisor in the same county where she appeared in Municipal Court. Under her employer’s policy, she was required to report her own involvement, or that of any immediate family member, in (among other things) any criminal or quasi-criminal matter in a municipal court. She reported the event with Monroe, and her manager opened an investigation. The investigation revealed that plaintiff had been a defendant in a Municipal Court case in a different municipality and that her driver’s license had been suspended for a period of time. Plaintiff had not reported either of those things. Moreover, while under suspension, she “regularly took trips to Trenton to attend meetings using a state vehicle, and she continued to use an employee parking pass in violation of Judiciary policy,” Justice Fernandez-Vina noted.
Disciplinary charges were brought against plaintiff. Her manager testified that the charges were brought due to plaintiff’s lack of candor, not because of her municipal court involvement itself. Plaintiff eventually resolved the charges by accepting a fifty-day suspension without pay, and a demotion. She then sued defendant for malpractice.
The lower courts granted summary judgment for defendant because, as plaintiff’s manager had said, plaintiff’s lack of candor, not the substance of municipal court charges, were the reasons for plaintiff’s suspension and demotion. The Supreme Court disagreed, applying the de novo standard of review.
Justice Fernandez-Vina noted that “[t]he issue of causation is ordinarily left to the factfinder.” The “substantial factor” test applies to proximate cause. Here, while the Court did not “condone plaintiff’s failure to report prior violations, [the Court found] that a jury could reasonably conclude that defendant’s legal advice was a substantial factor in her demotion and suspension, and accordingly find that plaintiff met her burden to prove proximate cause by a preponderance of the evidence.”
Defendant “knew plaintiff worked for the Judiciary in probation and offered that information to the municipal court judge before plaintiff confirmed it with the judge. Defendant should have known that there would be employment consequences for a Judiciary employee who enters a guilty plea, even if he was unaware what other infractions plaintiff had.” Plaintiff had asserted that she would not have pled guilty if properly advised, so a jury could rule in her favor. Defendant disputed some of the facts, but that dispute was for a jury, not summary judgment.
H.C. Equities involved the notice of claim provisions of the Tort Claims Act, N.J.S.A. 59:9-1 et seq. (“TCA”). Plaintiff had not timely filed a notice of tort claim as required by the TCA, and it did not seek leave to file a late notice of claim until well after the deadline for doing so. Instead, plaintiff relied on three letters sent by its multiple counsel and asserted that those letters satisfied the TCA.
The Law Division dismissed plaintiff’s tort claims (there were other types of claims, but they were not at issue on this appeal) for failure to file a notice or tort claim. The Appellate Division reversed. In an opinion by Justice Patterson, the Court agreed with the Law Division and found that the case was properly dismissed by that court.
Though defendant had filed a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim, because the Law Division considered material outside the pleadings, the matter was properly considered as a summary judgment motion, as provided by Rule 4:6-2(e). The de novo standard of review thus applied.
After discussing the date that plaintiff’s claims accrued and the law of substantial compliance with the TCA’s notice of claim requirement, Justice Patterson said that “a substantial compliance analysis relying on plaintiff’s multiple, discrete communications –sent at different times and to different recipients –is inconsistent with the Tort Claims Act. The Legislature clearly envisioned that a claimant would disclose to a public entity its tort causes of action in a single document that provides clear notice of its claim, not in a series of incomplete communications that must be considered together in order to infer that a claim may be filed.”
But apart from that, plaintiff did not satisfy the multi-part test for substantial compliance contained in Galik v. Clara Maass Med. Ctr., 167 N.J. 341 (2001). Those factors were: “(1) the lack of prejudice to the defending party; (2) a series of steps taken to comply with the statute involved; (3) a general compliance with the purpose of the statute; (4) a reasonable notice of petitioner’s claim, and (5) a reasonable explanation why there was not a strict compliance with the statute.” None of those criteria, Justice Patterson said, had been met. Accordingly, plaintiff had no right to pursue its tort claims, and the Court restored the ruling of the Law Division to that effect.