Justice ALBIN delivered the opinion of the Court. The matter before us concerns a challenge to the validity of a municipal ordinance authorizing the issuance of $6,300,000 in bonds to finance a redevelopment project in the Township of West Orange. Plaintiffs filed an action in lieu of prerogative writs claiming that the Township failed to secure the statutorily required approval for the bond ordinance from the Local Finance Board, which is a part of the Division of Local Government...
Justice PATTERSON delivered the opinion of the Court. In 1996, defendant Duquene Pierre was convicted of first-degree murder, first-degree felony murder, and several other offenses, arising from a fatal shooting in Elizabeth. Defendant was one of several suspects arrested for the shooting. He maintained that when the crime occurred at 3:19 a.m. on March 20, 1994, he and one of his codefendants were not in New Jersey, but on their way to Florida to visit defendant's relatives. After...
Justice SOLOMON delivered the opinion of the Court. In this appeal, the Appellate Division vacated defendant's conviction for first-degree aggravated sexual assault because the trial court failed to charge the jury on the lesser-included offense of second-degree sexual assault. In doing so, the Appellate Division denied, without comment, the State's request that the verdict be molded, and the panel remanded for a new trial on first-degree aggravated sexual assault. We are called upon to...
Judge CUFF (temporarily assigned) delivered the opinion of the Court. In this appeal, we consider whether the Rhode Island Medical Malpractice Joint Underwriting Association (RIJUA) must defend and indemnify a podiatrist in a medical malpractice action pending in New Jersey following rescission of the podiatrist's medical malpractice liability policy. The policy had been rescinded due to material misrepresentations concerning the state in which the insured podiatrist maintained his...
PER CURIAM . The judgment of the Appellate Division is affirmed, substantially for the reasons expressed in Judge Lisa's opinion reported at 429 N.J.Super. 533 , 60 A.3d 806 (App.Div.2013). For affirmance-Chief Justice RABNER and Justices LaVECCHIA, ALBIN, PATTERSON and SOLOMON-5. Opposed—None. Not Participating —Justice FERNANDEZ-VINA and Judge CUFF (temporarily assigned)—2.
Justice FERNANDEZ-VINA delivered the opinion of the Court. The Anti-Eviction Act (the Act), N.J.S.A. 2A:18-61.1 to -61.12 permits the "owner of a building of three residential units or less" to oust a tenant if the owner intends to "personally occupy a unit." N.J.S.A. 2A:18-61.1( l )(3). In this appeal, the Court determines whether that provision can be applied to remove a tenant from a two-story single-family house built in a converted garage by an owner who possesses a five-unit...
Judge CUFF (temporarily assigned) delivered the opinion of the Court. In this appeal, we examine three issues related to the statutory requirement that physicians licensed to practice medicine in New Jersey and providing medical care in this State must obtain and maintain medical malpractice liability insurance. The first issue presented in this appeal is whether an injured patient may bring a direct action against a negligent, uninsured physician. The second issue is whether a physician...
JUSTICE ALBIN delivered the opinion of the Court. In this appeal, we are called on to determine whether the constitutional standard governing an automobile search in State v. Pena-Flores, 198 N.J. 6 , 965 A .2d 114 (2009) is unsound in principle and unworkable in practice. In Pena-Flores, supra, 198 N.J. at 28, 965 A .2d 114, a deeply divided Court reaffirmed its departure from the standard for automobile searches set forth in State v. Alston, 88 N.J. 211 , 233, 440 A .2d...
Justice PATTERSON delivered the opinion of the Court. In this appeal, we determine whether a court may order the equitable disgorgement of an employee's compensation when the employee has breached his or her duty of loyalty to his or her employer, but the employer has not sustained economic loss as a consequence of that breach. This matter arose from a dispute between Bruce Kaye (Kaye), who managed several timeshare business entities, and Alan Rosefielde (Rosefielde), an attorney whom...
Judge CUFF (temporarily assigned) delivered the opinion of the Court. These consolidated appeals arise from an intrusion into an apartment by three armed men. Al-Tariq Wardrick and Jamil McKinney (together defendants) were identified as two of the three intruders and were charged in a seventeen-count indictment. Wardrick and McKinney were tried together by a jury and convicted of several offenses, including first-degree robbery and second-degree burglary. Each defendant appealed his...
Judge CUFF (temporarily assigned) delivered the opinion of the Court. In this appeal, we examine the role of our state courts in making the predicate findings necessary for a non-citizen child to apply for "special immigrant juvenile" (SIJ) status under the Immigration Act of 1990, as amended by the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 (TVPRA), Pub. L. No. 110-457, 122 Stat. 5044. SIJ status is a form of immigration relief permitting alien...
Judge CUFF , (temporarily assigned) delivered the opinion of the Court. All too frequently we hear of a parent who left a child unattended in a motor vehicle. In some instances the outcome has been tragic. Yet, even when no harm comes to the child, the parent still may be charged with a criminal offense or, if such action is warranted, the matter may be referred to the relevant child welfare agency. This is one of the latter cases. In this appeal, on a morning in early May 2009, a mother...
PER CURIAM . The judgment of the Appellate Division is affirmed by an equally divided Court. Justice LaVECCHIA , concurring. The Court granted the State leave to appeal an interlocutory order of the Appellate Division. The Appellate Division's order affirmed the grant of defendant's motion to suppress evidence seized after his arrest on a warrant that, unbeknownst to the arresting officers, had been judicially vacated eighteen months earlier but had not been removed from the relevant...
Justice ALBIN delivered the opinion of the Court. In this criminal case, at the conclusion of the first day of jury deliberations, the jury sent a note to the court asking: "Can a particular juror be excused from the case'" The court responded to the question appropriately, generally explaining that a juror could not be excused for reasons related to differences with other jurors, but could for personal reasons, such as illness. The court gave the jurors the opportunity to raise the...
Justice ALBIN delivered the opinion of the Court. New Jersey's common law imposes a duty on commercial landowners to clear public sidewalks abutting their properties of snow and ice for the safe travel of pedestrians. No corresponding duty is imposed on residential landowners. We adhered to that distinction between commercial and residential landowners in Luchejko v. City of Hoboken, 207 N.J. 191 , 211, 23 A.3d 912 (2011), a case involving a pedestrian who slipped on ice on a...
Justice PATTERSON delivered the opinion of the Court. This appeal arises from a challenge by initiative to the City of Camden's decision to disband its municipal police department and to contract with Camden County for the delivery of police services to the City of Camden by a countywide police department. The City of Camden's transition from municipal to county police services followed more than a decade of State oversight of the City's fiscal affairs in a pilot program conducted...
Justice PATTERSON delivered the opinion of the Court. These appeals present a question of statutory interpretation. The Court construes N.J.S.A. 2C:52-2(a), a component of the statutory scheme that authorizes the expungement of the records of certain criminal convictions under conditions established by the Legislature. That provision permits the expungement of a conviction for certain indictable offenses if the petitioner "has been convicted of a crime ... and ... has not been convicted...
Justice PATTERSON delivered the opinion of the Court. This appeal arises from an action brought by plaintiffs John and Pamela Ross, who allege that their residence was damaged by the migration of home heating oil from a leaking underground oil storage tank located at a neighboring residence. Plaintiffs asserted claims against the current and former owners of the property where the underground storage tank was located, based upon common law theories of negligence, strict liability, private...
Justice FERNANDEZ-VINA delivered the opinion of the Court. In this appeal, the Court examines a trial court's award of limited duration alimony and determines whether it was appropriate for the Appellate Division to reverse and remand for an award of permanent alimony, when, in doing so, it created a bright-line rule regarding permanent alimony awards. This case stems from a divorce, that ended an almost fifteen-year marriage. Litigation proceedings focused on the amount and type of...
Judge CUFF (temporarily assigned) delivered the opinion of the Court. As plaintiff Rolando Fernandes and his boss, Mario Freitas (Mario), 1 were installing a sewer pipe on a residential construction site, the wall of the trench in which Fernandes was working collapsed, burying him up to his chest. Mario promptly extricated plaintiff and later drove him home. Fernandes was seriously injured and has not worked since that day. Fernandes filed a complaint against the general contractor, DAR...
