Cases & Reading

You Can “Fight City Hall”

Time and time again (when the citizens have had enough of one-way government) the New Jersey courts have responded effectively. Twice in three years, Katz & Dougherty have gone to the Supreme Court on behalf of dedicated Trenton residents whose right to direct democracy was denied at the first court level. Read

 

Powers of the Mayor

Occasionally, a long-term Mayor will forget that he or she is under, not above, the law. Especially when a law was adopted by the initiative of the municipal voter exercising the precious right to initiate local laws, the act of a Mayor attempting to override the law by fiat is unacceptable. This happened, again in the City of Trenton, during 2008 when the citizens complained that Trenton Mayor Douglas Palmer was not enforcing the City’s residency law, a law put into being by a citizens’ referendum in 1973. Read

 

Homeowners Consumer Protection

On top of finding out that a contractor botched a home improvement project and is not returning calls, clients are often sadly surprised to learn that there is no insurance coverage for bad “workmanship”. Typically, insurance companies only insure contractors for damages they cause to their customers’ property, but that kind of damage does not include the very thing that the contractor was building or fixing. Read

 

Gennari v. Weichert Co. Realtors

During 1986,  in the height of a State-wide home construction boom,  a number of high-end home buyers were impressed with a Weichert advertisement for a new development of homes on two-acres on a former sod farm in Lawrenceville, which were advertised to be under construction by one of the best builders in New Jersey, a man having specific experience as a residential housing executive, with a reputation for excellence.   Only after buying and realizing that their homes were troubled, was it revealed that Weichert’s description of the builder and his background was highly exaggerated. Read