Supreme Court Nominee Anne Patterson

With the decision to forego re-appointing Justice John Wallace, Governor Christie has broken with precedent and has begun exploring new territory in the relationship between the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches of government in New Jersey. We applaud the decision to break with a past that has not served the citizens of New Jersey. And we are not persuaded by the weak arguments of the Administration’s detractors that “That’s not the way we do things around here.”



We must raise concern though with the Administration’s choice to navigate this difficult course and the spokesmen they have trotted out to support the nominee. 


First, this nominee has no judicial experience. No references on which to rely to soothe the minds of the Administration’s supporters who wonder: Will she indeed hold a stronger allegiance to the actual text of the state constitution than her predecessors? This hints at evidence of a strategy of stealth nominee, someone without a history for opposition researchers to comb through. If that were in fact the case, a nominee like Patterson, who has an extensive past of representing clients who are the “big, bad boogeymen” the Left has vilified for years, would not have even made the final round of consideration. 



Patterson represented Big Tobacco in the case Mercer Mutual Insurance Co. v. Proudman. Proudman left a cigarette burning on a chair in her apartment and the resulting fire destroyed the residence. The insurance company settled, leaving only the third party complaint by Proudman’s daughter Graziano, who was in the residence at the time the fire occurred, against R.J. Reynolds Tobacco. Graziano’s complaint alleged that the cigarette was defective because it was not self-extinguishing. New Jersey legislators have since followed the examples of New York and California and have passed a law requiring cigarettes to put themselves out if they have been left unattended. Expect to hear a good deal from Senator Joe Vitale about this one. In the Appellate Division, Patterson won for Big Tobacco when the court upheld the dismissal of Graziano’s claim. 
 


Patterson again represented big business when she, among others, represented paint companies who had manufactured and distributed lead paint. Twenty-six municipalities in the state sued these paint manufacturers claiming that their distribution of the paint amounted to a public nuisance. The Supreme Court decided that even though the legislature acted in this area, it did not create an additional remedy (other than the enforcement and abatement program created in the legislation) for the municipalities in court. Patterson’s service in this case actually advanced a favorable outcome for the conservative viewpoint. But it is far too easy to misinterpret it as a favor for the big business agenda against the poor urban minority population, one that is already getting hurt by the Christie administration budget. 
 


Finally, Patterson represented Abbott Labs on charges that it neglected to warn blood banks and physicians about failures of its HIV screening tests. The case revolved around a woman who contracted HIV while undergoing surgery. The woman’s lawyer claimed that Abbott Labs knew about the defective nature of the tests a year before the woman’s surgery, yet chose to keep the product on the market. Patterson’s position in the case was that summary judgment should be made on behalf of the defendant, Abbott Labs, without allowing a jury to consider the matter. 



We know that this Supreme Court appointment stuff isn’t the type of thing that Christie ran his campaign on. It’s not taking on the teachers union or slashing the budget. But it’s important. And the opponents aren’t going to be as incompetent as Barbara Keshishian has been. 
 


That’s why the Administration needs to roll out endorsements other than from his own political party and the Trenton establishment. Find some business organizations to get behind the appointment. Maybe even a legal reform organization to chime in. It’s time to put the full court press on making this happen because the Democrats in the legislature hold all the cards and aren’t interested in making this easy on an Administration they already oppose on the budget. 
 


But at least it isn’t a member of the U.S. Attorney’s office, and that we can be happy with. 


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