Court Opinion

ID: 9763187
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 02:38:23.862509+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:39.925553
License: Public Domain

O’HERN, J.,
concurring.
I concur in the judgment of the Court that an equitable hen akin to the statutory workers’ compensation hen attaches to the proceeds of a malpractice suit premised on the failure of the worker’s attorney to prosecute a viable third-party action against a tortfeasor responsible for the worker’s injuries. I find nothing in this record to warrant a suspension of enforcement of the equitable *608remedy as in Charnecky v. American Reliance Ins. Co., 249 N.J.Super. 91, 592 A.2d 17 (App.Div.1991), aff'd o.b., 127 N.J. 188, 603 A.2d 512 (1992). In Chamecky the Court held that, before enforcing the equitable lien fashioned in Midland Ins. Co. v. Colatrella, 102 N.J. 612, 510 A.2d 30 (1986) that attached to the proceeds of an uninsured motorist claim, a court should consider whether there was, in fact, a double recovery.
I disagree with the opinion of the Court in this case insofar as it now overrules that aspect of Chamecky. The judicial remedy fashioned in Midland to forestall a double recovery is and remains inappropriate and unjust when there is no double recovery. Ordinarily, in an attorney malpractice case there is a suit within a suit and (if the malpractice is as plain as here when the attorney misses a statute of limitations) the worker recovers all that he or she would have recovered in the first instance. Hence, it is fair to view such a ease as a double recovery. The worker recovers all sums due for the injuries incurred — injuries for which he or she had been previously compensated. Not so in the circumstance of Chamecky when the recovery was, by its very nature, limited. It is unfair to deprive parties such as Charnecky, without so much as a hearing, of the benefits of the self-insurance that they had prudently obtained. Law should not penalize the prudent but, rather, prevent an imprudent grab at a double recovery.