# Piscataway Tp. Bd. of Ed. v. Caffiero

> Supreme Court of New Jersey · June 9, 1981 · 86 N.J. 308

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9763734

## Case

- **Full name:** Board of Education of Piscataway Township, a Public Body of the State of New Jersey, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. Mr. Joseph Caffiero, Mrs. Joseph Caffiero, His Wife, Jay Caffiero, Mr. Daniel O’donnell, Mrs. Daniel O’donnell, His Wife, and Francis O’donnell, Defendants-Appellants, and Mr. Dean Martone, Mrs. Dean Martone, His Wife, and Dean Martone, Defendants; Board of Education of the Borough of Roselle, Plaintiff, v. Tulio Monagas, “jane” Monagas, (First Name Being Fictitious) and Angel Monagas, Defendants-Appellants, and Great American Insurance Company, Intervenor
- **Court:** Supreme Court of New Jersey
- **Decided:** June 9, 1981
- **Citations:** 86 N.J. 308; 431 A.2d 799; 1981 N.J. LEXIS 1629
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Dissent by Clifford
- **Judges:** Pashman
- **Cited by:** 58 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9763734

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- holding that a statute imposing vicarious liability on parents or the guardian of a public school pupil for injuries to school property did not violate due process requirements or equal protection requirements and was, therefore, constitutional
- finding that “cost spreading principles” underlie “modern application” of “employer’s vicarious liability under the doctrine of respondeat superior’

## Opinion text

*326 CLIFFORD, J.,
dissenting.
It is not entirely clear to me what Disraeli had in mind when he observed that there are two things the public should never see being made: sausage and the law. 1 But I venture the notion that the remark aptly fits the process in which the Court has engaged today.
We have before us in N.J.S.A. 18A:37-3 a statutory relic, created but a few short years after the Civil War, prior even to the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, in the “spare-the-rod” era. There is not the faintest hint of what moved the legislature to come up with this curiosity, other than some vague idea of discipline of pupils in the public schools. It has until recently been permitted to lie, unused, unrecognized, and unwanted, in the state of desuetude to which it had mercifully been consigned. When a modern-day legislature sought to address the problem of malicious acts of vandalism by young people, it wisely ran right over this sorry reminder of times past and enacted L. 1965, c. Ill, currently codified in N.J.S.A. 2A:53-14 and 15, and supplemented it by L. 1970, c. 246, found in N.J.S.A. 2A:53-16 and 17. These statutes represent a balanced treatment of the nexus between “vandalism” and “parental neglect of child-supervision.” See N.J.S.A. 2A:53A-14.
In the meantime their forebearer remains on the books in N.J.S.A. 18A:37-3. Rather than deliver to it the sockdolager it so richly deserves, the Court encourages its resurrection. It does so not by interpreting that enactment but by inventing a new one. It thereby not only gives its blessing to unsound policy — the statute will, I suspect, impact largely on the poor and can be used to visit liability upon the parents of children who have remained immune to their parents’ best efforts at the world’s most difficult job, parenting — but also perpetuates an *327 enactment riddled with constitutional defects. Those defects are spelled out in Judge Crane’s perceptive dissent below, 173 N.J.Super. at 212. I agree with him in all respects and vote to reverse.
For affirmance — Chief Justice WILENTZ, and Justices SULLIVAN, PASHMAN, SCHREIBER, HANDLER and POLLOCK —6.
For reversal — Justice CLIFFORD — 1.
See Matter of Estate of Shields, 224 Kan. 604, 605 , 584 P.2d 139, 140 (1978) (McFarland, J., dissenting). The epigram is sometimes attributed to Bismarck, even though it does not sound much like the Iron Chancellor. See In re Petition of Graham, 104 So.2d 16, 18 (Fla.1958).

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9763734. Public record. Not legal advice.