New Jersey's Supreme Court has ordered mandatory settlement hearings in pending landlord-tenant cases and said renters who fail to show up will face an eviction order.
Chief Justice Stuart Rabner's Friday order directs the lower courts to begin scheduling settlement conferences this month prioritizing older cases with the most owed rent or newer cases with more than a year's worth of back rent. He said the courts are facing an enormous backlog that includes 14,000 cases that have been pending for more than a year. Nearly 60,000 evictions were filed between April 2020 and March of this year, according to numbers provided by the courts.
The order came as a surprise to tenant lawyers and advocates who called the consequences cruel and said it would cause confusion since many residents are still waiting for rental assistance. There's also a bill before Gov. Phil Murphy that would end the eviction moratorium earlier depending on people's income and protect tenants from eviction if they certify they applied for help and were financially harmed by the pandemic.
"While I appreciate that there is a backlog and things have to move, it feels as though expediency was prioritized over due process here," said Jessica Kitson, a senior managing attorney for Volunteer Lawyers for Justice. "I'm really disappointed that this is where we are."
Most landlord-tenant trials remain suspended and until now, settlement conferences held remotely between parties were voluntary. Rabner said most of the conferences will continue to take place remotely and the court will provide on-site technology to those who need it. If the parties can't reach an agreement, the case can go to trial; trials are expected to resume Sept. 1.
Landlords who don't show up will have the eviction case dismissed. Tenants who don't appear will have a default judgement entered against them though they won't be physically evicted until the statewide ban on lockouts ends Dec. 31.
Maria Lopez, an organizer with the Ironbound Community Corporation, called the decision catastrophic and said too many tenants will receive default judgements against them. Most don't have legal representation and she said some may not be properly notified of the conference date or may have issues accessing technology.
"During the pandemic we’ve just seen such chasm between the haves and have-nots. We are punishing the most vulnerable," she said. "This seems severe when there are a lot more avenues to be explored in how we are going to resolve this crisis."
