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New Jersey’s Arbitration Appeal Deadline-A Call for Clarity, New Jersey Law Journal, by Gregory F. Brown, Esq. and Iram Valentin, Esq., published 1-31-2025

Posted Feb 3, 2025

The right to reject the award is temporary and subject to a strict 30-day deadline. Rule 4:21A-6(b) provides that a party must file a notice of rejection of the award with the civil division manager within 30 days of the “filing of the arbitrator’s award in the court’s electronic filing system.” If the notice is not filed within 30 days of the filing of the award, the award becomes binding.

Gregory F. Brown and Iram Valentin of Kaufman Dolowich discuss in the New Jersey Law Journal article below some of the further clarity needed when it comes to New Jersey’s nonbinding, compulsory arbitration program and 30-day deadline to reject an award and request a trial de novo. 

New Jersey litigators are familiar with New Jersey’s nonbinding, compulsory arbitration program and the 30-day deadline to reject an award and request a trial de novo. The program promotes the speedy and inexpensive resolution of cases through the submission of the controversy to an experienced court-appointed attorney, who listens to the parties then renders an award. The New Jersey Court Rules provide that a party may reject an award and proceed to trial if they are not satisfied with the award. Still, the right to reject the award is temporary and subject to a strict 30-day deadline. Rule 4:21A-6(b) provides that a party must file a notice of rejection of the award with the civil division manager within 30 days of the “filing of the arbitrator’s award in the court’s electronic filing system.” If the notice is not filed within 30 days of the filing of the award, the award becomes binding. The 30-day deadline can be relaxed with a showing of “extraordinary circumstances,” see Hartsfield v. Fantini, 149 N.J. 611 (1997), but cases where relief was provided under that standard are rare. In short, compliance with the 30-day deadline is vital if a dissatisfied party wants to vacate the award.

What constitutes the “filing” of the arbitration award for the purpose of triggering the 30-day appeal period? Rule 4:21A-5, which was amended Sept. 1, 2024, provides that “the court shall upload the award into the court’s electronic filing system, at which time it shall be deemed filed and provided to the parties.” See R. 4:21A-5. Before the rule was amended, the event that constituted “filing” was the subject of at least five Appellate Division decisions, which reached different conclusions. The recent amendment modernizes the rule to account for the introduction of eCourts and remote proceedings, perhaps with the objective of resolving the split in the Appellate Division. In practice, though, the amended rule may not provide the requisite clarity, and may lead to additional appeals.

Amended Rule 4:21A-5’s use of the word “upload” could generate controversy in application. The word is not defined by the amended rule, and the statewide eCourts system does not use the term “upload” on the online case jacket. Instead, two dates are provided in separate columns, the “filed date” and the “entry date.” The filing date and entry date are almost always identical, but sometimes they are not. On occasion, the arbitrator files the award on one date, but the court does not enter it in eCourts until a later date. In that circumstance, the parties do not receive a copy of the arbitrator’s written award until the court distributes it through the eCourts notification system on the “entry” date. When the eCourts “filed” date and “entry” dates are different, a litigant is left to speculate as to which is the “upload” date that triggers the 30-day rejection deadline. Indeed, both dates involve a court officer’s upload of some kind, and the term does not provide a meaningful distinction as to which is dispositive. Adding to the confusion is Rule 4:21A-6’s continued reference of the “filing of the arbitrators award” to trigger the 30-day period. In addition, the Supreme Court issued an order regarding the eCourts system in 2017, which provides that “documents filed through an approved electronic filing system are deemed filed upon receipt into the system.” See Order: Filing of Documents Electronically Using a Judiciary-Authorized Electronic Filing System—Supreme Court Relaxation of Rule 1:5-6 (Nov. 15, 2017).

The competing considerations between using the “filed” verses “entered” date was the subject of two unpublished Appellate Division decisions decided shortly before Rule 4:21A-5 was amended. In Tutt v. Parker 149, (App. Div. Dec. 5, 2023), the arbitrator rendered an award on June 14, 2022, and filed it with the court that day. The award was not “entered” on eCourts until June 15, at which time the parties received an electronic notification of the award. One of the parties filed a notice of rejection of the award on July 15, 30 days after the eCourts “entry” date. The clerk rejected the notice because it was filed more than 30 days after the arbitration award was filed. In deciding the dispute, the Appellate Division held that the “entry” date should be used. The panel based its conclusion, in part, on other court rules that “condition a filing deadline on the receipt of notice that a judgment, order, or decision has been entered against a party.”

Months later, the Appellate Division reached the opposite conclusion in a nearly identical scenario in Lindor v. Jenkins, (N.J. Super. Ct. App. Div. Mar. 5, 2024). There, arbitration occurred Sept. 21, 2022, and the award was filed that day. On Sept. 22, the award was entered on eCourts. On Monday, Oct. 24, the defendant filed a notice of rejection of the award under the rationale that it was timely because the 30-day deadline fell on Sat., Oct. 22. Under that scenario, the Appellate Division held that notice was untimely because the date the arbitrator filed the award, Sept. 21, triggered the 30-day appeal period. Lindor reasoned that using the “entry” date, or the date the parties received electronic notification of the award, “is illogical and would result in an inconsistent implementation of Rule 4:21A-6.” The court explained that using the eCourts notification date would result in a different rejection deadline in each case, and that the date the arbitrator filed the award, which is evident from the docket, should trigger the deadline.

Lindor’s analysis is founded in the pre-amendment arbitration rules. Under former Rule 4:21A-5, the arbitrator filed the award, triggering the 30-day period. The former rule separately addressed notice, and provided that “the court shall provide a copy thereof to the parties who appear at the hearing.” See Former Rule 4:21A-5. The notification process was not subject to a timetable or deadline. In 2019 “New Jersey Administrative Office of the Courts Arbitrator’s Training Curriculum,” the Administrative Office of the Courts instructed that the purpose of using the date the arbitrator files the award is to ensure a uniform event on which the 30-day appeal period commences, and to avoid a different appeal date based on the time the notice was sent or received.

The introduction of the term “upload” in amended Rule 4:21A-5 does not seem to reconcile the competing considerations expressed in Tutt and Lindor. There is nothing in the rule that ties the act of uploading to either the “filing” date or “entry” date on eCourts because both dates involve the uploading of a document. Consequently, under the amended rule, a litigant may still credibly argue for either the “filed” date or “entry” as it suits them, which does not advance the objective of uniformity. A court deciding such a motion might be left to decide what “upload” means in the context of the rule, with possible reliance on fact testimony by a court employee or expert witness to explain what “upload” means.

To resolve the question, Rule 4:21A-5 should be amended to make it consistent with the nomenclature of the eCourts system. By replacing the term “upload” with “enter,” the rule will be clear. Using the “entry” date on eCourts will provide reasonable uniformity in the deadline, while fairly providing the parties a full 30 days to review and analyze the award once it is actually received. Using the eCourts entry date would protect parties from errors or lapses by court personnel and avoid the need for fact-sensitive motions seeking to apply the Hartsfield “extraordinary circumstances” standard. The elimination of reference to the arbitrator’s “filing” of the arbitration award should also be considered. Using the date the arbitrator files the award does not promote deadline uniformity because Rule 4:21A-5 already provides that the arbitrator may file the award as late as 10 days after the arbitration. In that sense, a deadline based on the arbitrator’s filing of the award is already fluid. Removing the term “filing” will also reduce ambiguity by clearly ruling out the eCourts filing date as the date that triggers the 30-day appeal period.

If using the eCourts entry date results in a longer period between the date of the arbitration session and the rejection deadline in some cases, the trade-off will be saved judicial resources that would otherwise be devoted to the continuation of the “filed” verses “entry” date controversy, which is unlikely to be settled by the introduction of the term “upload.” By amending Rule 4:21A-5 to eliminate the ambiguous “upload” nomenclature, the Supreme Court can decisively resolve the split of authority in the Appellate Division and establish a uniform and fair method for setting the deadline to reject an arbitration award.

Reprinted with permission from the Jan. 31, 2025 edition of “New Jersey Law Journal” © 2025 ALM Global Properties, LLC. All rights reserved. Further duplication without permission is prohibited, contact 877-256-2472 or reprints@alm.com. “

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