Trends in New Jersey Employment Law

In recent months, New Jersey's Appellate Division has rendered three significant employment law decisions.

State v. Saavedra, No. A-1449-12T4, 2013 N.J. Super. LEXIS 185 (App. Div. Dec. 24, 2013): The Court affirmed that a public employee could be indicted for stealing confidential documents from her employer, despite the New Jersey Supreme Court's holding in Quinlan v. Curtiss-Wright Corp., 204 N.J. 239 (2010), which allowed the employee in that case to use confidential documents that she had taken from her employer to support her discrimination and whistleblower claims under the Law Against Discrimination ("LAD") and Conscientious Employee Protection Act ("CEPA"), respectively. (For more on Quinlan, see our prior alert). New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development v. Crest Ultrasonics, No. A-0417-12T4, 2014 WL 43989 (App. Div. Jan. 7, 2014): The Court upheld the constitutionality of New Jersey's landmark law that banned employers from advertising the unemployed "need not apply." N.J.S.A. 34:8B-1, et seq. Baanyan Software Services, Inc. v. Kuncha, No. A-2058-12T3, 2013 WL 6670221 (App. Div. Dec. 19, 2013): The Court declined to exercise personal jurisdiction over a consultant who was sued by his former New Jersey-based employer where the employment agreement at issue did not contain a forum selection clause. This newsletter summarizes these three Appellate Division decisions and discusses their implications for New Jersey employers.

State v. Saavedra

Background & Holding

Ivonne Saavedra ("Saavedra") worked for the North Bergen Board of Education ("Board") as a clerk for a child-study team. Saavedra filed a civil suit against the Board, alleging gender, ethnic, and sex discrimination. During discovery, Saavedra's counsel learned that she had taken "hundreds of documents" containing confidential medical and educational information of children. Based upon this theft of confidential records, a grand jury indicted Saavedra and charged her with theft and official misconduct.

Arguing that Quinlan had established a right for employees to take confidential employer documents to support discrimination claims, Saavedra moved to dismiss the indictment. The lower court denied the motion. While the court concluded that Quinlan did not apply to the instant criminal matter, it nonetheless performed a Quinlan analysis "out of an abundance of caution" and determined that the seven factor test devised by the Supreme Court to determine whether an...