Justice LaVECCHIA delivered the opinion of the Court. This appeal addresses a trial judge's post-verdict ex parte discussion with the jury. During the discussion, one juror commented about a witness's conduct when the witness took the oath prior to testifying. Counsel were informed of the comment. Concerns about the substance of the comment, as well as how it should have been handled, arose during post-verdict motion practice; those same concerns divided the Appellate Division majority...
Justice ALBIN delivered the opinion of the Court. At a routine doctor's appointment for a hand injury, Y.N. (Yvonne) 1 learned that she was four months pregnant. During that four-month period, Yvonne had been taking Percocet for injuries caused in a car accident and became dependent on that medication. Hospital personnel advised her that she could not stop taking Percocet abruptly without endangering her pregnancy and recommended that she enter a methadone maintenance treatment program....
Justice SOLOMON delivered the opinion of the Court. Defendant Joseph M. Jaffe received a three-year state prison sentence almost a year after pleading guilty to an accusation charging him with third-degree conspiracy to possess cocaine with the intent to distribute. At sentencing, defense counsel asked the court to consider defendant's rehabilitative efforts since he was arrested and charged. The trial court declined to weigh such evidence in assessing mitigating factors, concluding that...
Chief Justice RABNER delivered the opinion of the Court. In this appeal, we consider the free speech rights of residents in a high-rise cooperative apartment building. A resident who was a regular critic of the building's Board of Directors was interested in running for a Board seat. He asked the Board if he could distribute campaign materials in the building. The Board, citing a "House Rule" that barred soliciting and distributing any written materials, denied the request. On prior...
Justice ALBIN delivered the opinion of the Court. The New Jersey Code of Criminal Justice, N.J.S.A. 2C:1-1 to 2C:104-9, sets forth detailed sentencing guidelines to channel the discretion of trial judges to ensure fair and uniform sentences. This approach is intended to minimize the potential for idiosyncratic and disparate sentencing. Our judges are given wide discretion to sentence within the range prescribed by a criminal statute, but that discretion is not unconstrained. In fixing a...
Justice FERNANDEZ-VINA delivered the opinion of the Court. In this case, respondent, Neil M. Cohen, an attorney licensed to practice law in New Jersey, pleaded guilty to second-degree endangering the welfare of a child, contrary to N.J.S.A. 2C:24-4(b)(5)(a). The plea followed an investigation into sexually explicit pornographic images of children discovered on a state-issued desktop computer used by respondent and on respondent's private law office computer. He was sentenced to five years in...
Justice ALBIN delivered the opinion of the Court. In State v. Rodriguez, we held that a person who acts in self-defense and "kills in the honest and reasonable belief that the protection of his own life requires the use of deadly force" cannot be convicted of murder, aggravated manslaughter, or manslaughter. 195 N.J. 165 , 172-74, 949 A.2d 197 (2008). That conclusion, we stated, follows directly from the language of the New Jersey Code of Criminal Justice, N.J.S.A. 2C:11-2(a), 11-4(b)(1)...
Judge RODR GUEZ (temporarily assigned) delivered the opinion of the Court. In this appeal, we address an issue similar to the question addressed in State v. Moran, 202 N.J. 311 , 997 A.2d 210 (2010), where the Court identified the appropriate factors to be considered when sentencing a person convicted of reckless driving, N.J.S.A. 39:4-96. The factors were provided in order to channel the discretion afforded to the sentencing court under the reckless driving statute. Here, defendant...
Judge RODR GUEZ (temporarily assigned) delivered the opinion of the Court. In this case, a jury determined that two New Jersey public entities. South Jersey Transportation Authority (Authority) and the New Jersey State Police (State Police), were liable for injuries sustained by plaintiff as a result of a multi-vehicle pile-up on the Atlantic City Expressway (Expressway) during a heavy snowstorm. 1 Plaintiff alleged that the public entities were negligent in failing to adhere to standard...
Justice PATTERSON delivered the opinion of the Court. In 2004, the Legislature enacted the Patient Safety Act to reduce the incidence of medical errors that may endanger patients in health care facilities. N.J.S.A. 26:2H-12.23 to -12.25. The Act imposed new requirements for evaluating and reporting of adverse events, and created a statutory privilege shielding specific communications from discovery in litigation. N.J.S.A. 26:2H-12.25(b), (c), (e), (g). The Act sought to encourage health...
Justice ALBIN delivered the opinion of the Court. In this appeal, the State challenges an order of the family court allowing seventeen-year-old A.B. and his attorney to conduct a thirty-minute inspection of a home where the juvenile is alleged to have committed sexual offenses against his six-year-old cousin, N.A. The juvenile moved for the inspection after the prosecutor's investigators had photographed the home and cut a piece of rug from it for forensic testing. The juvenile's attorney...
Justice ALBIN delivered the opinion of the Court. Arbitration provisions are now commonplace in consumer contracts. Consumers can choose to pursue arbitration and waive their right to sue in court, but should know that they are making that choice. An arbitration clause, like any contractual clause providing for the waiver of a constitutional or statutory right, must state its purpose clearly and unambiguously. In choosing arbitration, consumers must have a basic understanding that they are...
Justice ALBIN delivered the opinion of the Court. A well-established principle of ancient origin is that the legislature cannot increase the punishment for a crime after it has been committed. This simple principle — that after-the-fact laws cannot raise the punishment for earlier committed conduct — is embodied in the Ex Post Facto Clauses of both the Federal and New Jersey Constitutions, U.S. Const. art. I, 10; N.J. Const. art. IV, 7, 3. In 2009, George C. Riley, then seventy-six...
Judge CUFF (temporarily assigned) delivered the opinion of the Court. Defendant Bruno Gibson was convicted of driving under the influence (DUI), in violation of N.J.S.A. 39:4-50. At trial, the conviction was entered solely on the basis of evidence elicited at a pre-trial hearing to suppress the fruits of the stop and subsequent arrest. The Appellate Division reversed defendant's conviction, and entered a judgment of acquittal, holding that a trial court sitting as a fact-finder in a quasi-...
Justice FERNANDEZ-VINA delivered the opinion of the Court. This appeal presents two questions related to the standard of care that private fire sprinkler maintenance inspectors are required to exercise. First, we are asked to consider whether plaintiffs must offer expert testimony to establish the standard of care applicable to fire sprinkler inspectors who performed their inspections pursuant to relevant provisions of the New Jersey Uniform Fire Code (UFC), N.J.A.C. 5:70-1.1 to -4.20. If...
Justice LaVECCHIA delivered the opinion of the Court. In this appeal, we review whether the disabled son of a retired member of the Police and Firemen's Retirement System (PFRS) may have his survivors' benefits paid into a first-party special needs trust (SNT) created for him under 42 U.S.C.A. 1396p(d)(4)(A). We hold that he may and reverse the contrary administrative action by the PFRS Board of Trustees (Board). The Board's strict view of how to implement the word "child" in the...
Justice PATTERSON delivered the opinion of the Court. In State v. Clawans, 38 N.J. 162 , 183 A.2d 77 (1962), and State v. Hill, 199 N.J. 545 , 974 A.2d 403 (2009), this Court set forth the governing standard that a trial court should apply to determine whether to give an adverse inference jury charge when a party fails to call a witness at trial. This case requires the Court to apply the principles of Clawans and Hill in a setting not previously addressed by the Court: a personal...
Justice PATTERSON delivered the opinion of the Court. This appeal requires the Court to analyze an agreement for the sale of a residential property and a subsequent lease and repurchase agreement, and to determine whether the transactions collectively gave rise to an equitable mortgage, violated consumer protection statutes, or contravened this Court's decision in In re Opinion No. 26 of the Committee on the Unauthorized Practice of Law, 139 N.J. 323 , 654 A.2d 1344 (1995). In 2007,...
Judge CUFF (temporarily assigned) delivered the opinion of the Court. On a warm summer evening in late June 2004, approximately fifty young men and women gathered at the Camden apartment of a recent high school graduate to celebrate her graduation. Later in the evening, a verbal argument erupted on the street in front of the apartment between two young men — Jahnell Weaver and Edward Williams. Each had a friend standing by their side. As the verbal altercation continued, someone drew a gun...
Justice ALBIN delivered the opinion of the Court. A jury convicted defendant, Kelvin Williams, of first-degree robbery based on evidence that he entered a bank, told a teller he possessed a bomb, and demanded money. Defendant made no gesture as he issued his threat, and a bomb was not displayed. Defendant was dressed in a hooded sweatshirt and pants, and his hands were not visible. It is undisputed that defendant was not armed with a bomb. Second-degree robbery is elevated to a first-degree...
