MIDTERMS Democrats outnumber Republicans by 800,000 in New Jersey. So you’d think the DCCC would let Dems pick our own nominees in Tuesday’s primary, like it’s supposed to work. But the Democratic Party still insists on pre-selecting its own top-down choices, and…
Read more

I take this as a rally mostly for Bob Menendez’ benefit; House members Bonnie Watson Coleman, Don Payne Jr., and Albio Sires are also up in November but their seats are safe. They can each afford to spend some of…
Read more

The Two Most Jersey Things That Happened Yesterday (hat / tip Matt Arco):  New Jersey ratified the Equal Rights Amendment on April 17, 1972. Illinois just voted to do so on Wednesday. Wait … So if one more state ratifies,…
Read more

Promoted by Jason Springer- We’ll call this the first installment of: Better know your nominee

By now you’ve probably heard that Chris Christie has taken the unprecedented step of not reappointing a New Jersey Supreme Court Justice. Christie would like to replace Justice John Wallace with Anne Patterson.

Here are some of the cases she’s taken on:

Big tobacco. In 1998, Anne Patterson represented RJR Nabisco and RJ Reynolds who were defendants in a case brought by 13 plaintiffs, many of which were children of people who died from smoking-related diseases. Here’s an example of who she was defending against:

John Lippincott acts on behalf of the Estate of his father, Jesse Lippincott, Jr., who was diagnosed with lung cancer in either January or February 1995, after a history of smoking beginning in the 1950’s. His father smoked Kent and Marlboro brand cigarettes.

She and her colleagues successfully argued before the Appellate Division that the court should deny these plaintiffs the ability to pursue a class action against the cigarette companies. This was in the midst of the heyday of tobacco litigation.

Lead paint. In 2007, Anne Patterson represented DuPont before the New Jersey Supreme Court in a lawsuit by many of the major cities in New Jersey (e.g. Newark, Jersey City, Camden, East Orange, Bayonne) and several counties (Cumberland, Essex, Union) against lead paint manufacturers, seeking costs of detecting and removing lead paint and providing medical care to residents affected with lead poisoning. The Appellate Division had allowed the case to go forward, but the Supreme Court reversed.

Free speech in malls. In 1990, several groups against the first Gulf War sought to leaflet in several malls around the state. The malls, including the Cherry Hill Mall and the Mall at Mill Creek, attempted to require those groups to buy $1,000,000 in bodily injury insurance and up to $1,000,000 in property damage insurance in order to leaflet there. Anne Patterson represented the Cherry Hill Mall and Woodbridge Center as defendants. The Supreme Court in 1994 held that the groups did have a free speech right to petition in malls – especially when both malls that Patterson represented were allowing less controversial events without the same restrictions. Effectively, the Court found that the malls were discriminating based on speech they disliked, and invalidated such discrimination.

Just climbing back into New Jersey news after a long, unexpected weekend of hospital adventures. So, if I missed anything we should all be reading, you know what to do – Rosi MIDTERMS CD4: Bolstered by anti-Trump sentiment, can a…
Read more

Dr. Andrew Kahrl’s New York Times Op-Ed is worth reading in full. As a scholar of the history of segregation, he ties recent phenomena’s like the Philadelphia Starbucks incident to Jim Crow and beyond. And not just in the South…
Read more