Unlike so many judicial opinions, which leave the reader in suspense about the outcome until the end, the answer to this question, right up front, is “yes.” An Appellate Division opinion issued on this date in 1992 so stated. The opinion’s author was then-Judge (later Justice) Long.
Burrell v. Quaranta, 259 N.J. Super. 243 (App. Div. 1992), involved the entire controversy doctrine, a notoriously thorny area of New Jersey law. The case arose out of several auto accidents resulting from the icing of liquid spilled on Route 73 from a Township of Maple Shade Sewage Treatment Plant vehicle.
Quaranta and Burrell were both seriously injured in that sequence of events. Quaranta filed a lawsuit against Burrell and multiple other defendants. Burrell was represented by insurance carrier counsel in the defense of that case. That attorney, as well as those for other defendants, filed Answers and crossclaims.
The case settled with a payment to Quaranta. Burrell then filed suit for his injuries against the same parties to the prior action (and one additional party), including Quaranta. Except for the one party whom Quaranta had not sued in the first action, defendants won summary judgment on entire controversy grounds.
Burrell appealed, arguing that the entire controversy doctrine should not have been applied. The core of his reasoning was that since he had insurance counsel in the defense of the Quaranta case, the real party in interest there was the carrier, while in Burrell’s subsequent suit he himself was the real party in interest. His argument was based largely on Humble Oil & Refining Co. v. Church, 100 N.J. Super. 495 (App. Div. 1968), which also involved two seriatim cases, one filed by an insurance carrier, arising out of an auto accident.
Judge Long found that case distinguishable, noting that the procedural history there showed that “all parties knew of all claims prior to resolution of the first case.” Thus, a key purpose of the entire controversy doctrine, to put all parties on notice of the existence of all claims, whether filed together or separately, was satisfied in Humble Oil, but not in Burrell’s case, where the settlement of Quaranta’s case preceded Burrell’s attempt to pursue his own damage claim.
But Judge Long went further. She observed that “[t[he roots of Humble Oil can be found in a series of cases decided prior to the adoption of the Constitution of 1947 which allowed splitting causes of action irrespective of whether the first claim had been resolved before the second was filed.” Representative of those cases was Ochs v. Public Service Railway Co., 81 N.J.L. 661 (E. & A. 1911).
The Humble Oil panel considered that, as an intermediate appellate court, it was bound by Ochs, a ruling from the (then) highest court. Judge Long disagreed that Ochs was still good law when Humble Oil was decided. At that time, she said, “the entire controversy doctrine, as it had evolved, would have prohibited a party from suing for property damage, trying that suit to conclusion and then bringing a separate suit for personal injury.”
No Supreme Court case had overruled Ochs and its progeny. But Judge Long still found those cases no longer binding. “While, as a general rule, we are bound by the decisions of the State’s highest courts, including the Court of Errors and Appeals, an exception exists where more recent decisions of the Supreme Court clearly undermine the authority of a prior decision, although not expressly overruling it.” That was so here, and Ochs thus did not preclude application of the entire controversy doctrine.
At least one subsequent case has applied Burrell to find authority from the highest court no longer binding. What constitutes something that “clearly undermine[s]” a ruling of the highest court “although not expressly overruling it” may be debated in particular circumstances. But the Burrell principle allows parties who believe that older decisions have been left behind to argue that the former law has since changed even without having been overruled.