Manahawkin Convalescent v. O’Neill, 217 N.J. 99 (2014). This comprehensive opinion by Justice Patterson for a unanimous Court ultimately boils down to this: because plaintiff, a nursing home, did not violate the Nursing Home Act, N.J.S.A. 30:13-1 to -17 (“NHA”), in demanding that funds belonging to one of its resident patients but under the control of defendant, her daughter (the defendant here), be used to pay for the nursing home’s charges, defendant’s claims under the Consumer Fraud Act, N.J.S.A. 56:8-1 et seq. (“CFA”), and the Truth in Consumer Contract, Warranty, and Notice Act, N.J.S.A. 56:12-14 to -18 (“TCCWNA”), which were premised on an alleged NHA violation, necessarily failed.
Defendant had contended that the nursing home’s agreement required defendant, as a “Responsible Party” for the nursing home’s charges, to use defendant’s own monies to pay those charges. Had that been so, that would have constituted a violation of the NHA. However, after carefully reviewing the contract language, and applying the de novo standard of review that applies to a trial court’s interpretation of a contract, Justice Patterson determined that the contract required only that the patient’s funds, which were in her daughter’s control, be used. The Court reached a similar conclusion regarding a collection letter that plaintiff sent, which defendant likewise contended sought to force her to use her own funds. Though the letter was “inartfully drafted,” it did not demand that defendant use her own funds. Thus, since neither the agreement nor the collection letter required defendant to use her own funds, there was no NHA violation.
Justice Patterson then turned to the CFA claim. A key reason that the Court granted certification was to determine whether the “learned professional” exception to the CFA protected the nursing home, which was a basis for the Appellate Division’s opinion. That exception provides that “certain transactions fall outside the CFA’s purview because they involve services provided by learned professionals in their professional capacity.” However, given the finding that there was no NHA violation, and the fact that the CFA claim was “tethered to her NHA claim, O’Neill’s CFA claim was properly dismissed by the trial court.” Thus, the Court had no occasion to reach the “learned professional” exception. Justice Patterson did, however, state that the Court had “serious doubts that the billing and collection function at issue in this case would qualify for the learned professional exception,” an observation that appears wholly correct.
Finally, since the TCCWNA claim also was “predicated upon an alleged violation of the NHA’s prohibition on Medicaid or Medicare certified nursing homes requiring third party guarantees of payment as a condition of resident admission or retention,” and the NHA claim had failed, the TCCWNA claim too was not viable. O’Neill had complained that the trial court had not made any findings on the TCCWNA claim, in violation of the findings and conclusions requirement of Rule 1:7-4. But Justice Patterson ruled that although the trial court should have addressed the TCCWNA claim separately, since the finding of no NHA violation unquestionably resolved the TCCWNA issue as well, there was (in essence, though the Court did not use this term) no harm from the absence of separate TCCWNA findings.
This was a practical and insightful result. As discussed here, the requirement of findings is an important one, but it should not be fetishized. Since the NHA ruling was dispositive of the TCCWNA claim, there was no need for separate findings.
Though the holding of this case is rather narrow in scope, Justice Patterson’s opinion furnishes extensive catalogs of CFA and TCCWNA law, among other things. It is a good starting point for further research in those areas of the law.