[brief] The contract at issue in this appeal was a standard Commitment for Title Insurance issued to a purchaser ([...])(hereinafter “Plaintiff”) by a title insurance company ([...])(hereinafter “[...]”) through its authorized agent ([...], d/b/a [...])(hereinafter “[...]”).  Plaintiff retained and paid [...] a settlement fee to act as its settlement agent.  Under their agreement, part of [...]’s job as settlement agent under the parties’ Commitment for Title Insurance was to provide protection to the Plaintiff “regarding the application of (its) funds or compliance with the requirements relating to the issuance of the (title) policy…”  Plaintiff was unaware of its obligation to intervene in the underlying foreclosure action, which prohibited its anticipated purchase of 422 West Fourth Street (the “Property”).  But that is precisely why the Plaintiff hired a settlement agent and entered into an agreement for title insurance -- to protect against potential issues with the disbursement of funds and compliance relating to the title policy.  The Trial Court erred in characterizing this narrowly as a question of whether [...] was required to provide Plaintiff with legal advice.  No legal advice was required for [...] to fulfill its contractual and fiduciary obligations to the Plaintiff.  It is not Plaintiff’s argument that [...] merely failed to inform of an obligation to intervene in the underlying foreclosure -- even assuming arguendo no such obligation existed, [...] certainly had a duty to tell Plaintiff they could not insure title before disbursing its funds.  [...] was by no measure a passive bystander in the events before, during, and following the planned closing of the Property -- though it was eventually revealed that [...] made several critical errors, they appeared during the process to be vigorously fulfilling their obligations.  As just a few examples, [...] prepared closing documents related to the transaction, hosted the closing in their office, and called the seller as many as 20 times after the closing in an attempt to complete the transaction.  [...] made two critical errors which should have been dispositive against summary judgment in favor of the Defendants.  The first was disbursing Plaintiff’s funds not just without securing good title to the Property for its client, but without telling Plaintiff that it had been unable to secured good title.  The second mistake was [...]’s perplexing issuance of title insurance to the Property’s seller; despite its contractual and fiduciary duties to Plaintiff, the buyer of the Property, Defendants issued title insurance to the seller, with whom it had no agreement or obligation.  The Plaintiff does not claim Defendants owed it legal advice.  Rather, Defendants were negligent, in breach of contract, and violated the New Jersey Consumer Fraud Act by concealing from the Plaintiff that they could not issue title insurance, while disbursing funds at closing anyway.  There is no precedent for refusing to enforce a contract between a potential buyer and title insurance company under these circumstances, and several examples of cases holding that an agreement incidental to a prohibited contract remains enforceable.  [...] never should have disbursed its client’s funds without a valid deed from the seller to the Plaintiff.  Defendants did not have an obligation to provide legal advice.  But they did have an obligation to postpone or cancel the closing until it had the proper conveyancing documents and protect its client’s funds while it confirmed and could insure valid title, and not to issue title insurance to the wrong party.