Appellate Advocacy & Post-Trial Practice

​The homeowners claimed the homeowners association’s response to their request to mediate the dispute violated the applicable mediation statutes. They sued the association for declaratory and injunctive relief. The circuit court, sitting in its appellate capacity, had affirmed the final judgment in favor of the association and awarded it appellate attorney’s fees and costs. The homeowners then filed a petition for writ of certiorari to the Fifth District Court of Appeal, alleging the circuit court deprived them of due process and committed an error of law that resulted in a miscarriage of justice. The Fifth District Court of Appeal denied the petition and awarded the association its appellate attorney’s fees. This prompted the homeowners to dismiss another pending appeal and resolve all claims for attorney’s fees in favor of the association without further litigation.

Marshall Dennehey was successful in the New Jersey Appellate Division, which affirmed the dismissal of the plaintiff’s complaint under New Jersey’s Charitable Immunity Act. The defendant operated a shelter for battered women, their dependent children and the homeless. The plaintiff and her child were residents at the shelter and beneficiaries of its charitable goals when the plaintiff slipped and fell on ice on the shelter’s property. She argued that she was not a beneficiary of the charity because she did administrative tasks and volunteered in the charity’s thrift store. However, the trial court and Appellate Division rejected those arguments, holding that the plaintiff’s presence on the defendant’s property was due to her being a resident beneficiary of the charity, not as a result of any volunteer work she may have performed for the defendant. Thus, because her volunteer activities were incidental to her residency at the shelter, the Charitable Immunity Act applied and the dismissal of the complaint was affirmed.

In this medical malpractice action, the defendant, a New York doctor with no connection to New Jersey, was sued in New Jersey by a former patient who was a New Jersey resident. The court first found that the defendant did not waive consideration of the issue by waiting until after a dispute concerning the sufficiency of the affidavit of merit was resolved. The court then found that the evidence presented by the plaintiff was simply insufficient to establish either general or specific jurisdiction. The fact that the doctor had no connection to New Jersey and that the treatment occurred in New York were key to the decision, as the advertising activity by the New York hospital where the doctor is on staff, which the plaintiff relied upon, was insufficient to establish jurisdiction over the physician, especially as those activities had nothing to do with the plaintiff’s decision to treat with the defendant. In a published decision, the New Jersey Appellate Division affirmed the dismissal of the plaintiff’s complaint for lack of personal jurisdiction.

Our appellate attorneys were retained shortly before trial. While driving our client’s truck, an employee struck a car from behind that had stopped in the middle of the road after its hood flew open. The collision injured three members of a family and killed a six-year-old child. The Superior Court vacated the judgment and remanded for a new trial on the basis that the trial judge had improperly granted summary judgment to several vehicle repair shops, all of whom knew of but failed to repair the condition that made the car’s hood fly open.