The Supreme Court announced that is has granted certification in three more cases. Two of them are criminal appeals. The third is an insurance case in which, due to a dissent in the Appellate Division, an appeal as of right was also filed and accepted by the Court.
The insurance case is Katchen v. Government Employees Insurance Co. The question presented there, as phrased by the Supreme Court Clerk’s office, is “Among other issues in this dispute regarding uninsured (UM) and underinsured motorist (UIM) coverage, may an insurer exclude UIM coverage for an accident involving a vehicle owned by the insured but not covered under the subject policy?” The majority of the Appellate Division (Judges Hoffman, who wrote the opinion, and Fisher), in a decision reported at 457 N.J. Super. 600 (App. Div. 2019), held that the exclusion at issue did not violate public policy or result in ambiguity. Dissenting was Judge Suter, a past Commissioner of the Department of Banking and Insurance.
State v. J.V. presents this question: “Did the new juvenile waiver statute, N.J.S.A. 2A:4A-26.1(c)(3) (requiring the prosecutor to consider defendant’s eligibility for special education, as well as mental health concerns, before seeking waiver), apply retroactively to this matter, where defendant was sentenced after the enactment, but before the effective date, of the new statute?” In a per curiam opinion, a three-judge Appellate Division panel ruled that the new statute should have been applied, reversing the ruling of the trial level court and remanding for a new waiver hearing.
Another unpublished decision by the same panel that decided J.V. is the subject of the final case that the Supreme Court agreed to hear. That appeal is State v. Greene, which involved two defendants. The question presented there is “Are these two defendants entitled to a new trial on the grounds that the State, in its opening statement, told the jury that defendant Greene had confessed to his grandmother, who never testified?” The Appellate Division reversed defendants’ convictions of murder and other crimes, holding that the State’s opening statement comment was too prejudicial to be overcome by a cautionary instruction. The panel remanded the matter for a new trial.