Opinion ID: 3011843
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: New Jersey View

Text: New Jersey courts have taken a different tack, finding the passage of similar legislation by compacting states to satisfy the concurred in test and be sufficient to imply an intent on the part of both states to apply the legislation to a bi-state entity. Bunk v. Port Auth. of New York & New Jersey, 676 A.2d 118, 122 (N.J. 1996). In Bunk, the court applied New Jersey’s workers’ compensation laws to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, a bi-state 7 entity whose compact contains concurred in language, without examining whether either state had expressly intended its workers’ compensation laws to apply. The court reasoned that the corollary of the proposition that neither state may unilaterally impose its legislative will on the bi-state agency is that the agency may be subject to complementary or parallel legislation. Id. (citing Eastern Paralyzed Veterans Ass’n v. Camden, 545 A.2d 127 (1988)). The court then examined New York and New Jersey’s workers’ compensation laws and found them somewhat similar. Id. According to the New Jersey view, then, a state may meet the requirements of concurring in the other’s legislation merely by passing a somewhat similar statute of its own.