Law Alerts

Municipal Liability

New Jersey
By Kara Pullman, Esq. (kapullman@mdwcg.com or 856-414-6305)

The plaintiff alleged that defendant Grieb sexually assaulted her. Both were employees of the defendant school board. The plaintiff had filed a motion to file a late notice of tort claim against the school board, which was denied because the plaintiff had not established extraordinary circumstances - the defendant was not made a party to that proceeding. Defendant Grieb pled guilty to the crime of sexual contact and the plaintiff subsequently initiated this suit against him, individually, but did not name the school board as a defendant in the law suit.

The defendant successfully moved for summary judgment, the trial court finding, under Velez v. City of Jersey City and Bonitsis v. N.J. Inst. of Tech., that the plaintiff could not proceed against the defendant because of the earlier denial of her motion for leave to file a late notice of claim against the school board. The appellate panel reversed and agreed with the plaintiff's contention that Velez and Bonitsis were distinguishable because the plaintiffs in those cases named a public entity as a defendant in the litigation. The plaintiff here had made no claim against the school board and sought recovery only from the defendant, her assailant. The court held that depriving the plaintiff of an opportunity to pursue her claim against the defendant based upon her Tort Claims Act failures as to the school board would not further the policy or purposes of the Act. The court noted that it was purely accidental that the plaintiff was assaulted on school grounds and that there must be some nexus between the wrong committed and the defendant's public employment in order to mandate that a notice of claim be filed before suit may be instituted.