The New Jersey Supreme Court has agreed to hear arguments over whether a trial judge should have recused in a legal malpractice case after he previously sat on the appellate panel that ruled on the underlying case.

In an order dated July 20 and made public four days later, the court granted a petition for certification in Berman, Sauter, Record & Jardim v. Robinson, which the Appellate Division reinstated earlier this year after the judge, Donald Coburn, threw out the case.

Coburn, a retired appellate judge who had been recalled in Morris County, sat on a panel in 2008 that decided an appeal in a suit that became the basis for the malpractice suit at issue.