Court Opinion

ID: 9693662
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 16:55:25.43142+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:49.287034
License: Public Domain

CLIFFORD, J.,
concurring in judgment.
And so another long-standing principle of law melts away, this one under the fervid heat generated by Stewart v. 104 Wallace St., Inc., 87 N.J. 146 (1981). I thought then, as I do now, that Stewart was wrongly decided; that its rule is both unjustified and unwise; and that Yanhko v. Fane, 70 N.J. 528 (1976), represented the correct approach to sidewalk cases. See also Davis v. Pecorino, 69 N.J. 1, 9 (1975) (dissenting opinion).
Five members of the Court joined in Yanhko’s majority opinion. There remains but one. Nothing has changed in the six years since Yanhko’s definitive treatment of the subject — no “new” developments in sidewalk construction or maintenance, in snow-clearing methods, in society’s mores, in the weight of authority elsewhere (it continues to be against Stewart and today’s rule) — -nothing save the composition of this Court.
But it matters not that I continue to believe Yanhko was rightly decided. The institutional duty is to follow until changed the law as it is now, not as I might wish it to be. Hudgens v. NLRB, 424 U.S. 507, 518, 96 S.Ct. 1029, 1035, 47 L.Ed.2d 196, 206 (1976). Under the compulsion of that duty I cast one concurring vote.
CLIFFORD, J., concurring in the result.
For reversal and remandment — Chief Justice WILENTZ and Justices CLIFFORD, SCHREIBER, HANDLER, POLLOCK and O’HERN — 6.
For affirmance — None.