In December, 2023, Plaintiff Tannia Winston was involved in an incident at the Jersey City Public Library that gave rise to claims of slander, discrimination, and harassment. A month later, on January 12, 2024, based on her investigation into the library, Plaintiff served a Notice of Claim for her damages on the State of New Jersey, but not Jersey City. Two weeks later, she filed a complaint against Defendant Jersey City Public Library outlining each of her claims and attaching the Jan. 12 Notice. In July, Plaintiff realized her mistake of putting the State rather than Jersey City on notice and filed a motion to allow her more time to serve a Notice of Claim on Jersey City. The issue in Winston v. Jersey City Public Library, 2026 N.J. Super. Unpub. LEXIS 1813 (App. Div. Aug. 4, 2026) became whether she could show extraordinary circumstances for her failure to serve Jersey City with a Notice of Claim on time.
New Jersey’s Tort Claims Act requires a claimant to notify a public entity of their intent to sue the entity within ninety days of the day the cause of action accrued. If they do not notify the public entity by the ninetieth day, the claimant must file a motion with the court identifying “sufficient reasons constituting extraordinary circumstances” why they could not file the Notice of Claim within ninety days after their claim accrued.
In support of her motion, Plaintiff claimed the extraordinary circumstances that prevented her from serving timely notice on the Library were that the Jersey City Public Library received funding from the State and, thus, it must be a state entity, not a municipal entity. The motion judge was not persuaded. Reasoning that it was difficult to see how Plaintiff could reasonably make the mistake that a library with the name “Jersey City Public Library” was a State of New Jersey entity, the motion judge denied Plaintiff’s motion and dismissed her complaint. Plaintiff appealed.
Leaning on the Tort Claims Act’s emphasis on making the extraordinary circumstances requirement a demanding one, the Appellate Division found Plaintiff’s position unavailing. Her extraordinary circumstances argument leaned on the same claims: that her interpretation of the Library receiving State funds implicitly made it a state entity and not knowing about the interplay between state and local entities was confusing and, alternatively, that it was a “clerical error.” Further, she claimed the trial court made errors in the course of her oral argument; she did not receive a fair hearing. The Court dismissed her initial substantive claims out of hand, stating that Plaintiff could not identify a reasonable basis for her confusion and, to that end, the lower court’s finding was correct. As to her new claims arising out of the oral argument before the motion court, the Appellate Division advised that her reasons for extraordinary circumstances must be set forth in her motion and that her failure to adequately explain those grounds before the motion court could not save her claims.
Though on a lower scale of magnitude than other “circumstances constituting extraordinary circumstances” claims, Plaintiff’s unavailing claims here serve to reinforce the “extraordinary” element of extraordinary circumstances: an ordinary, routine mistake will not satisfy the standard, but it must be something with a much greater impact that directly affects the claimant’s very ability to file the notice.
