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HIGH COURT DOUBTFUL OF CITY'S POWER TO LIMIT HANDGUN BUYS
"Justices of the state Supreme Court seemed sympathetic on Monday to Jersey City's effort to limit handgun purchases but dubious about whether state law allows it. Lower courts have held, in response to a challenge by a shooting club and a Jersey City gun dealer, that the city ordinance ? restricting handgun buys to one per month per person ? is preempted by state criminal code provisions that regulate gun sales. But Corporation Counsel William Matsikoudis argued in Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs Inc. v. Jersey City, A-75/76-08, that the state's regulatory scheme is not so exclusive as to foreclose a local exercise of police. Both the trial judge and the Appellate Division had concluded the ordinance was invalid on preemption grounds. Matsikoudis said that the Legislature, in enacting the current law, purposefully left some decisions about handguns up to local governments."

BULK PUBLIC RECORDS COME AT A PRICE
"In a setback to large-scale requesters of public documents, the N.J. Supreme Court ruled Monday that the release of millions of pages of title records may be conditioned on the redaction of Social Security numbers, and that the $460,000 redaction cost may be charged to the requester. Even though the records are available at the county clerk's office, disclosing them in bulk to a company that planned to put them in a computerized database searchable electronic database used by title companies would violate the expectation of privacy and heighten the risk of identity theft, unless Social Security information was purged, the Court held in Burnett v. County of Bergen, A-43. Data Trace Information Systems was seeking access to 22 years worth of records, an estimated eight million pages filed with the Bergen County clerk from 1984 to 2006, including deeds, liens, mortgages, releases, assignments and discharges."

MESSY IP CASE GENERATES MALPRACTICE SUIT
"A witness accused of selling his testimony to Sony Corp. in an ugly, mudslinging mess of a patent fight is suing Sony's lawyers for malpractice and fraud. In a wide-ranging suit filed Tuesday in New Jersey District Court, Craig Thorner, the key witness in the Sony legal team's effort to overturn an $82 million patent infringement verdict in a case against Silicon Valley's Immersion Corp. over video game controllers, accuses Sony's outside and in-house lawyers of snookering him into a $150,000 deal, which came in the form of convoluted agreement to license his patents. He also accuses Sony's outside counsel ? Gregory Gewirtz of New Jersey firm Lerner David Littenberg Krumholz & Mentlik ? of malpractice for allegedly acting as his lawyer in the deal, but for Sony's benefit. Aside from the alleged attorney misconduct, Thorner also is accusing Sony and another company of patent infringement."

A.G. SUES COMPANIES OVER FALSE PROMISES OF FORECLOSURE RELIEF
"The state Attorney General's Office on Monday announced the filing of a consumer fraud suit against companies that allegedly preyed on struggling mortgage holders with false promises to help them forestall foreclosure. Property Solutions of N.J. Inc., and PSRE Holding Company, both of Union City, acquired properties at exorbitant discounts, bound the victims to predatory sale-leaseback agreements and filed eviction notices against some of them before selling the homes to other buyers, according to the complaint filed in Hudson County Superior Court. The suit is the ninth in a series of civil actions since June against corporations and individuals accused of various scams aimed at mortgage-holders facing foreclosure, the attorney general said."

JUDGE CERTIFIES CLASS ACTION AGAINST MERCEDES-BENZ
"A federal judge in Newark has certified a class action alleging that Mercedes-Benz U.S.A. of Montvale sold cars equipped with an emergency-response system that it knew would soon become obsolete. Senior District Judge Dickinson Debevoise ruled the plaintiffs suffered an ascertainable loss because they bought vehicles designed to last 20 or more years, while the emergency system became useless after 2007. The "Tele Aid" system ran on analog signals, not digital, and the plaintiffs allege Mercedes-Benz continued to sell vehicles so equipped from 2002 to 2007 even though it knew as early as August 2002 that a change in Federal Communications Commission regulations would allow AT&T to discontinue its analog cellular service in 2008, rendering the system inoperative. The case consolidates 10 suits filed in six states. Debevoise estimated the class at more than 100,000 members."

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