Catching up with our appellate courts, here are summaries of the three published opinions (two by the Supreme Court and one by the Appellate Division, in addition to the COVID vaccine mandate decision discussed here):
C.R. v. M.T., ___ N.J. ___ (2021). Writing for a unanimous Court, Justice Pierre-Louis addressed an issue of first impression: what is the standard that should be applied in determining whether an alleged victim of sexual assault was too intoxicated to consent under the Sexual Assault Survivor Protection Act of 2005 (“SASPA”). That statute allows victims of nonconsensual sexual contact to obtain an order of protection. A victim may obtain such an order regardless of whether the alleged contact was prosecuted criminally, and independent of the result in any criminal case prosecuted.
In a detailed opinion, Justice Pierre-Louis discussed the “prostration of faculties” standard, which places on the victim the burden of showing that she was too intoxicated to consent, and the test from State in Interest of M.T.S., 129 N.J. 422 (1992), which requires a showing that sexual activity occurred without the alleged victim’s affirmative permission. The Court held that the latter standard should apply in the SASPA context.
New Jersey Division of Child Protection & Permanency v. J.R.-R., ___ N.J. ___ (2021). The Court was unanimous in this case as well. Justice Albin authored the Court’s opinion, which explained that the issue was “whether, in a case where DCPP has established that a child has been abused and neglected while in the care of his parents, the family court can shift the burden of proof to the parents to prove their non-culpability.” Reversing the Appellate Division, the Court held that such action by the Family Part is not permitted by the applicable statutory regime. “In enacting child-welfare laws in Title Nine, the Legislature placed on DCPP the burden of proving by a preponderance of the evidence that a parent abused or neglected a child. N.J.S.A. 9:6-8.46(b)(1). Although the statutory scheme allows for the nature of a child’s injuries to constitute prima facie evidence of abuse or neglect under N.J.S.A. 9:6-8.46(a)(2), nowhere in Title Nine has the Legislature authorized shifting the burden of proof to the parent.”
Dennehy v East Windsor Regional Bd. of Educ., ___ N.J. Super. ___ (App. Div. 2021). Plaintiff, a high school field hockey player, was injured during a practice when she was struck by an errant soccer ball from the boys’ soccer team, which was practicing on a nearby field. The soccer ball went over a “ball stopper” designed to prevent ball interference between simultaneous games or practices. Plaintiff sued the school board, the field hockey coach, and others. Defendants won summary judgment after the Law Division applied the heightened recklessness standard of Crawn v. Campo, 136 N.J. 494 (1994).
Plaintiff appealed, and the Appellate Division reversed in an opinion by Judge Mitterhoff. She concluded that the Crawn standard was to be applied only in “in circumstances involving two equally situated participants where one directly injured the other during the course of the sporting activity itself.” Crawn and other cases that applied the heightened recklessness test were all in that mold. But those were not the facts here, where “the claim is based upon a coach’s failure to properly supervise and oversee the participants of the sport he or she was tasked with instructing.”