Court Opinion

ID: 9728339
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 14:05:32.023487+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:47.849614
License: Public Domain

Coneord, P. J. A. D.,
Temporarily Assigned (dissenting in part). I join fully in the opinion of Justice Hall. I would, however, add another thought as to the unlikelihood of legislative intent by this statute to permit administrative recovery of damages for mental suffering, whether generally or to the limited extent allowed by the majority opinion. N. J. S. A. 10:5-37 reads, in part:
*421“* * * as to practices and acts declared unlawful by section 11 of this act, the procedure herein provided shall, while pending, be exclusive ; and the final determination therein shall exclude any other action, civil or criminal, based on the same grievance of the individual concerned. Nothing herein contained shall bar, exclude, or otherwise affect any right or action, civil or criminal, which may exist independently of any right to redress against or specific relief from any unlawful employment practice or unlawful discrimination.”
Reading the foregoing as an entirety, I construe it to mean that a victim of discrimination may seek relief for a particular remediable grievance in the agency or in the courts but if he takes judgment for that grievance in the agency he may not also seek relief for it in the courts. While the word “grievance” is susceptible of the meaning of the wrongful conduct of the offender, the context of its use here, the presence in the act of the last sentence quoted above and principles of presumptive reasonableness of legislative intent suggest that in this instance “grievance” means the particular injury complained of flowing from the wrongful conduct. Thus, discriminatory deprivation of an apartment rental is one grievance and mental distress consequent upon the refusal to rent is another.
However, it seems fair to say that the Legislature also contemplated by the provisions quoted above that an aggrieved person, if resorting to the agency for relief, should there seek whatever relief of any kind it has jurisdiction to award him, and that once he takes judgment in the agency he should be barred from recourse in the courts for any relief of the type he might have secured in the agency. But he would not be barred from going to both the agency and the courts if there were a type of relief available in the latter but not the former.
Under the formulation of the majority, agency relief is available for damages for mental distress but confined to “minor or incidental” recovery, presumably barring substan*422tial damage awards1 even if no more than fairly compensatory for the humiliation and accompanying psychological or psychiatric injury caused. If my construction of N. J. 8. A. 10:5-27 as outlined above is sound, the majority decision operates to condition availability of the vitally necessary and efficient administrative remedy for specific relief (award of rental of apartment, etc.) on the victim forfeiting any right to recovery in any tribunal of substantial damages for mental suffering consequent upon discrimination. I cannot conceive the Legislature would have wanted such a result.
On the otHer hand, construing the act not to confer jurisdiction for administrative relief for damages for mental distress at all would allow the complainant to get both his specific relief before the agency and his tort-like mental damages, large ox small, in an appropriate court. This, it seems to me, is what the Legislature intended, as fairly as one can objectively discern such intent from the statute, its history and purposes and all other relevant indicia.
For modification — Chief Justice Weintbaub, and Justices Jacobs, Mountain and Pboctok — 4.
Dissenting in part — Justice Hall, and Judges Coneokd and Lewis — 3.

 By analogy to the law of damages for mental suffering in other contexts, reasonable compensatory awards of thousands of dollars for gross insult arising out of discrimination, especially if involving psychical injury, are readily conceivable.