For the first time in 25 years, the New Jersey Supreme Court Committee on Model Civil Jury Charges announced updates to a number of model jury charges, including revisions to the legal malpractice jury charges, see Model Jury Charges (Civil) 5.51A and 5.51B.
In essence, the Model Civil Jury Charges sets the framework to craft jury instructions. Every case brings their own unique facts that both courts and litigants must tailor the model charges to conform to those facts. Accordingly, these Model Civil Jury Charges are only just a starting point of the process of constructing an appropriate charge that adequately explains that law to the jury in the context of the material facts of the case being tried.
But what if that framework is outdated and not aligned with recent case law? The Committee on Model Civil Jury Charges sought to answer this question with an announcement that Legal Malpractice charge 5.51A will undergo significant revisions to include recent case law and additional instructions on duty and negligence. This charge now sets forth the standard of care for attorneys in New Jersey providing services, including attorneys holding themselves out as a specialist or who have been designated by the New Jersey Supreme Court as a “certified attorney” in civil trial law, among other areas. Additionally, this charge addresses the New Jersey Rules of Professional Conduct, guarantees or promises of results by attorneys, and reasonable legal strategies in the context of legal malpractice.
However, practicing attorneys will not see abrupt changes as judges have already been incorporating the latest case law into the instructions they provide to jurors. However, these changes will provide more clarification to trial courts and create a rubric for judges to apply when laying the ground for jury instructions. Issues related to attorney malpractice cases such as the standard of care for lawyers offering themselves as specialists, the role of the Rules of Professional Conduct, promises of results, and reasonable legal strategies, were formerly left to the court to align with case law and explain to jurors, but have now been directly addressed with these changes.
Moreover, the Committee revised and updated the Proximate Cause in Legal Malpractice 5.51B involving Inadequate or Incomplete Legal Advice, a charge that has not seen any updates since January 1997. Specifically, the update now includes recent case law and additional instruction on Proximate Cause in Legal Malpractice. Prior to the revisions, the charge stated that an attorney’s negligence must have been a substantial factor in bringing about harm to the plaintiff and that some harm was foreseeable. These changes come in light of the decision in Gilbert v. Stewart, 247 N.J. 421 (2021). In Gilbert, a plaintiff filed a legal malpractice claim against a defendant attorney for failing to advise of certain risks associated with a plea agreement to outstanding traffic tickets in municipal court. Under those circumstances, the Supreme Court concluded a reasonable jury could find that defendants breach of his professional duty was a substantial factor and thus a proximate cause of plaintiff’s harm. Subsequently, the Committee revised the charge, providing a definition to explaining foreseeability means whether a “similarly situated attorney would anticipate the risk that the attorney’s conduct would cause injury or harm to the attorney’s client.”
The changes to the malpractice jury charges were just one part of a broader effort to update model jury charges across the board. In the same announcement, charges for violations of New Jersey’s Law Against Discrimination and New Jersey Pregnant Workers Fairness Act were updated to reflect recent changes to case law. It is the expectation and hope that these changes will streamline and modernize the way jury charges work and provide clarity to practitioners.