On March 8, the New Jersey Supreme Court set out helpful guidelines with respect to staying driver’s license suspensions in drunk-driving cases—and it did so in a case in which the issue was technically moot because the defendant’s license was revoked for seven months, and the revocation was fully served before the matter reached the Supreme Court. The standards for a stay had been raised by the Appellate Division, which addressed them on its own. It did so presumably because a stay had been granted in both the municipal court and Law Division without any statement of reasons after the case had been tried in the municipal court, and therefore on trial de novo on the record in the Law Division, based on a stipulation of facts. The petition for certification, which did not challenge either the conviction or sentence, sought only review of the “standards for a stay in DWI cases.” Hence, as we understand it, the court was in essence asked to render an advisory opinion and decided to address a moot issue in order to give guidance on a subject of “significant public importance,” which our appellate courts, the parties and the amicus thought was important to provide.

The court concluded that standards governing stays of civil judgments, from Crowe v. DeGioia, 90 N.J. 126 (1982), “are not a good fit to assess license suspensions in DWI cases” and did not apply in this setting, and that Rule 2:9-4 governing bail pending appeal “provides more substantive direction” with respect to the question of granting a stay.

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