Title: Anne Riding v. Towne Mills Craft Centre, Inc., et al.

State: new-jersey

Issuer: New Jersey Supreme Court

Document:

(This syllabus is not part of the opinion of the Court. It has been prepared by the Office of the Clerk for the convenience of the reader. It has been neither reviewed nor approved by the Supreme Court. Please note that, in the interests of brevity, portions of any opinion may not have been summarized). LAVECCHIA, J., writing for a majority Court. The question before the Court is whether a successful age discrimination plaintiff, when seeking confirmation of an arbitrator's award , may move for counsel fees pursuant to the fee shifting provision of the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination (LAD). In 1997, Anne Riding filed an age discrimination complaint under the LAD against Towne Mills Craft Centre, Inc. (Towne Mills) and William Bavin, who has since been dismissed from the action. In her complaint, Riding made a claim for counsel fees. The case was selected for non-binding arbitration, pursuant to a pilot program operating in Somerset County. In her Arbitration Statement of the Case, Riding sought a total of $57,404.52 in various forms of damages. It is undisputed that neither Riding nor Towne Mills ever raised the issue of counsel fees in the Arbitration Statement or during the arbitration. The arbitrator found in favor of Riding and awarded damages in the amount of $38, 240. Counsel fees were not mentioned in the award. As required by Court rule, Riding, before the fiftieth day following the arbitrator's award, moved to confirm the award and requested counsel fees and costs in the amount of $9, 743.78. Towne Mills did not contest the confirmation but did oppose the request for fees, contending that the fee application was an attempt to modify the award beyond the thirty-day time frame for modification. The trial court confirmed the award but denied the fees, holding that Riding's application constituted an impermissible request for modification. Riding appealed, contending that the request for fees was not a modification but an application for fee shifting under the LAD, to which she was entitled as a matter of law. A divided panel of the Appellate Division reversed, citing the remedial nature of the LAD and the importance of fee shifting in discrimination suits in holding that Riding was a prevailing party entitled as a matter of law to counsel fees absent special circumstances to the contrary. The majority did not agree that Riding had somehow waived counsel fees by not raising the issue with the arbitrator. The majority permitted her to make an application for fees to the trial court after the confirmation of the award. The dissent asserted that the majority's holding contravened the purposes of arbitration, including judicial efficiency and economy. The matter came before the Court on appeal based on the dissent in the Appellate Division. HELD: For LAD cases voluntarily submitted to nonbinding arbitration, the trial court will resolve a prevailing party's request for counsel fees under the fee-shifting provisions of the LAD unless the parties agree to submit the fee issue to the arbitrator. 1. This matter implicates two competing policies: the strong legislative policy to provide fee shifting for successful LAD claimants versus the policy of encouraging prompt and efficient resolution of all disputes in a given matter through arbitration, minimizing the need to expend judicial resources on those cases. (Pp. 5-6) 2. The LAD is remedial in nature and is to be interpreted liberally; counsel fee awards in LAD cases should be the rule rather than the exception. Mindful of the important policy considerations of facilitating discrimination suits through fee-shifting provisions for prevailing parties, the Court is not inclined to consider the parties' silence on the issue of counsel fees during the arbitration of the merits of the claim, and the corresponding silence in the arbitration award, as dispositive of the fee issue. As noted by the Appellate Division, the collateral issue of fees was not presented until Riding properly moved to confirm the arbitration award. (Pp. 6-11) 4. The U.S. Supreme Court in White v. New Hampshire Department of Employment Security noted that requests for attorney's fees are uniquely separable from those issues to be proved at trial on the merits. Furthermore, the Supreme Court observed that federal rules promulgated for the amendment of judgments were not meant to apply to attorney fee petitions. A similar argument can be made in this case: that the application of arbitration confirmation and award modification standards are ill-suited to a civil rights statute that provides for fee shifting to a prevailing party. (Pp. 13-16) 5. In the future, in nonbinding arbitration, statutory fee-shifting issues will be reserved for court resolution unless the parties otherwise agree to submit a fee demand to the arbitrator. A successful litigant in an arbitration will return to court to confirm an award, and the trial court would then be responsible for ruling on the reasonableness of a prevailing party's fee request if the parties had not submitted the request by mutual consent to the arbitrator. If necessary to avoid any prejudice to the defendant in assessing the potential extent of liability, the parties to the arbitration would not be precluded from some discovery to facilitate an estimate of the amount of the potential fee award in the event the arbitrator were to conclude in favor of the plaintiff. (Pp. 16-18) Judgment of the Appellate Division is AFFIRMED. JUSTICE VERNIERO, concurring in part and dissenting in part, agrees with the underlying premise of the Court's holding, namely that plaintiffs who successfully arbitrate their discrimination complaints are entitled to seek reasonable counsel fees. Justice Verniero differs from the majority on how to implement that holding. He is of the view that the Court should encourage arbitrators to resolve fee applications rather than reserve that function exclusively for the Law Division unless the parties agree otherwise. CHIEF JUSTICE PORITZ and JUSTICES STEIN, COLEMAN, and ZAZZALI join in JUSTICE LaVECCHIA's opinion. JUSTICE VERNIERO filed a separate opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part, in which JUSTICE LONG joins. ANNE RIDING, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. TOWNE MILLS CRAFT CENTRE, INC., a New Jersey Corporation doing business as House of Marbles, Teign Valley Glass and Bovey Pottery, Defendant-Appellant, and WILLIAM BAVIN, Individually and as Owner of Towne Mills Craft Centre, Inc., Defendant. ___________________________________ Argued October 10, 2000 -- Decided January 29, 2001 On appeal from the Superior Court, Appellate Division. Stephen M. Offen argued the cause for appellant (Schachter, Trombadore, Offen, Stanton & Pavics, attorneys). Brian M. Cige argued the cause for respondent. The opinion of the Court was delivered by ANNE RIDING, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. TOWNE MILLS CRAFT Centre, INC., a New Jersey Corporation doing business as House of Marbles Teign Valley Glass and Bovey Pottery, Defendant-Appellant, and WILLIAM BAVIN, Individually Defendant. ___________________ VERNIERO, J., concurring in part, dissenting in part. I agree with the underlying premise of the Court's holding, namely, that plaintiffs who successfully arbitrate their discrimination complaints are entitled to seek reasonable counsel fees. I differ from my colleagues only insofar as how to implement that holding. In my view, the Court should encourage arbitrators to resolve fee applications rather than reserve that function exclusively for the Law Division unless the parties agree otherwise. The salutary purpose of New Jersey's arbitration system is to adjudicate disputes efficiently and inexpensively and to ease the caseload of state courts. Behm v. Ferreira, 286 N.J. Super. 566, 574 (App. Div. 1996). Consistent with that purpose, arbitrators have proved themselves to be skilled in resolving complaints, and I see no reason why those same professionals should not decide the question of fees. In the binding arbitration setting, the Court acknowledges the practice of arbitrators determining fee awards, ante at ___ (slip op. at 16); yet, it divorces them from that function in the non-binding setting unless the parties affirmatively agree to submit the fee question to arbitration. I do not believe that the differences between the two forms of arbitration are so great as to warrant those separate procedures. Whether in the context of a binding or non-binding system, arbitrators develop a feel of the case much like trial judges in the Law Division and are thus in an excellent position to determine the reasonableness of any fee award. Having witnessed firsthand the legal services rendered in a particular matter, arbitrators are uniquely infused with a fresh personal knowledge of the issues involved[.] Cone v. W. Va. Pulp & Paper Co., 330 U.S. 212, 216, 67 S. Ct. 752, 755, 91 L. Ed. 849, 852 (1947). That unique perspective is lost once the matter is transferred. The majority correctly describes this case as one of first impression, ante at __ (slip op. at 11), and acknowledges that there is merit to the argument on both sides, id. at ___ (slip op. at 7). Under those circumstances, I would not impose a holding that governs all future cases. Rather, because this matter arose by virtue of a pilot program in one county, I would seek input from the program's designers before passing on prospective procedures. In sum, I would remand this matter to the arbitrator to consider plaintiff's fee application. The Court's holding should not be carved in stone until program designers and other interested parties have had the opportunity to offer us their views. JUSTICE LONG joins in this opinion. NO. A-54/55 ANNE RIDING, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. TOWNE MILLS CRAFT CENTRE, INC., a New Jersey Corporation doing business as House of Marbles, Teign Valley Glass and Bovey Pottery, Defendant-Appellant, and WILLIAM BAVIN, Individually and as Owner of Towne Mills Craft Centre, Inc., Defendant. DECIDED January 29, 2001 Chief Justice Poritz