Court Opinion

ID: 9698424
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 19:50:05.260658+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:40.885424
License: Public Domain

CLIFFORD, J.,
dissenting in part.
I join in all but section IV of the Court’s comprehensive opinion. Section IV applies the mandatory party-joinder rule prospectively only. I see nothing in the circumstances of the case or in considerations of fairness to justify depriving these defendants of the benefit of a rule that they advocated and have succeeded in establishing, one that we all agree advances *29the goals of judicial economy and efficiency, ante at 23-24. The Court points out that “[a]ll of the concerns that have energized our joinder rules under the entire controversy doctrine coalesce in the circumstances of this case,” ante at 25. It observes that “the participation of all potentially responsible persons as parties in the original action would have resulted in a fuller and fairer presentation of the relevant evidence and would have enabled the jury to make a more informed and complete determination of liability,” and that joinder would have assured a “comprehensive, just and conclusive” determination. Ante at 25.
There is more. The Court acknowledges that “party fairness would have been served by joinder,” ante at 25; that “[t]he failure to have joined these defendants in the earlier action seems prejudicial and unfair,” ante at 25; and that “joinder would not be unfair to plaintiff.” Ante at 25. And then the wind-up: “In sum, the failure to have joined these defendants in the earlier lawsuit is more than an unfortunate inconvenience. It is inconsistent with all of the policies that surround the entire controversy doctrine.” Ante at 26.
How then can it be that the interests of “fairness to plaintiff and others similarly situated,” ante at 28, require prospective application? Surely no one could have been misled by Crispin v. Volkswagenwerk, A.G., 96 N.J. 336 (1984) (decided before the complaint was filed in the first case), for as the Court points out, ante at 22, we there observed that joinder of known responsible parties should be the norm. Id. at 343.
Up until the final two paragraphs of the Court’s opinion the plaintiffs lose and defendants win. Imagine the jolt the parties must have experienced when they got to the end!
I would apply today’s ruling to the parties in this case.
Justice GARIBALDI joins in this partial dissent.
*30For affirmance — Justices POLLOCK, O’HERN, HANDLER and STEIN — 4.
Dissenting — Justices CLIFFORD and GARIBALDI — 2.