A 2020 New Jersey Supreme Court decision, S.T. v. 1515 Broad Street, LLC, 241 N.J. 257 (2020), raises a question that matters far beyond the personal injury lawsuit at its center: how much evidence does it take before a court can take away an adult's right to control her own affairs? The answer, the Court held, is a great deal — and the procedures required to get there are not optional.
The case is also a reminder of something that even lawyers sometimes forget - - you have the right to make what may seem like an objectively bad decision. A choice that looks unwise to a lawyer or a judge is not, by itself, evidence of incapacity.
What Happened to S.T.
S.T. was a forty-four-year-old chemical engineer, a Vietnamese refugee who had served in the U.S. Army and earned advanced degrees in engineering and environmental science. In 2008, she was struck on the head by a metal plate that fell from a doorway as she exited her office building in Bloomfield. The injury was serious. The Social Security Administration declared her permanently disabled within a year. Over the following years, she was diagnosed with post-concussion syndrome, major depressive disorder, cognitive impairment, and related conditions — all found to be permanent and causally related to the accident. She made more than 500 visits to healthcare providers.
She filed a personal injury lawsuit against the building owner and others. During the litigation, the defendants made an offer of judgment for $475,000. S.T. rejected it, against the advice of her attorney, who believed the offer was in her best interest given the challenges in proving her case.
Rather than accept her decision, S.T.'s own attorney filed a motion to have a guardian ad litem appointed to determine whether she had the mental capacity to make litigation decisions. He did not copy S.T. on the motion. The court appointed one without giving S.T. notice or a hearing. The guardian ad litem investigated, concluded S.T. lacked the capacity to decide whether to settle or go to trial, and was then granted the authority by the court to make that decision for her. A $625,000 settlement was reached — without S.T.'s consent. She appeared at the final hearing and objected forcefully, comparing the forced settlement to a life sentence. The court approved it anyway.
The Appellate Division affirmed. The New Jersey Supreme Court reversed.
Guardian Ad Litem vs. Legal Guardian: A Critical Distinction
The trial court's core mistake was treating the role of a legal guardian and guardian ad litem as interchangeable. They are not, and the difference is legally significant.
A legal guardian is appointed only after a court has formally adjudicated that a person is incapacitated — meaning impaired by mental illness or intellectual disability to the extent that the person "lacks sufficient capacity to govern himself and manage his affairs." N.J.S.A. 3B:1-2. That process requires a formal complaint, sworn affidavits from qualified medical professionals, at least twenty days' notice to the person, the right to independent counsel, and a hearing at which incapacity must be proven by clear and convincing evidence. Only then may a court appoint a guardian with the legal authority to make decisions on someone else's behalf. For more on how that process works, see Understanding Guardianship in New Jersey and What Happens After You're Appointed Guardian.
A guardian ad litem serves a fundamentally different and more limited function. When a person is alleged — not adjudicated — to be mentally incapacitated, a court may appoint a guardian ad litem to investigate the question and report back. The guardian ad litem acts, as the Court put it, as "the eyes of the court" — an independent investigator, not a decision-maker. The guardian ad litem's recommendations are not binding on the court, and the court cannot delegate its own fact-finding function to the guardian ad litem. The guardian ad litem's job is to advise the court whether a formal guardianship hearing under Rule 4:86 should proceed — not to replace the person's judgment in the meantime.
In S.T.'s case, the court skipped the adjudication entirely. It appointed a guardian ad litem, then immediately handed that person the authority to settle S.T.'s lawsuit over her objection — without ever holding the guardianship hearing that New Jersey law requires. The Supreme Court described this as the trial court "abdicating the Judiciary's nondelegable oversight and factfinding function" and "outsourcing to the guardian ad litem the role of final arbiter of S.T.'s capacity."
The Right to Make a Poor Decision
One of the most important principles running through the Supreme Court's opinion is the one the lower courts failed to apply: making a decision that others consider unwise is not, by itself, determinative of incapacity.
New Jersey law recognizes a clear public policy favoring the right of self-determination for all people. Competent people, the Court noted, "ordinarily can choose what they want, even when their choices are unwise or contrary to their best interests." The Rules of Professional Conduct require lawyers to abide by their client's decisions about the scope and objectives of representation — including the decision whether to settle a lawsuit. RPC 1.2(a). A lawsuit is a property right protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and that right cannot be taken away without following the procedural safeguards the law demands.
The trial court judge told S.T. at the settlement hearing that she was "a very intelligent woman" but that "sometimes a little knowledge is dangerous" and that the mere fact that she wanted to reject a $625,000 offer was "troubling." The Supreme Court saw that reasoning for what it was: substituting the court's and counsel's judgment for the client's, without the legal authority to do so. As the Court observed, had S.T. not rejected the original $475,000 offer — the very rejection her attorney cited as evidence of her diminished capacity — an additional $150,000 would never have been placed on the table.
This same tension between protection and autonomy runs through all of New Jersey's guardianship law. Even in a formal guardianship proceeding, the Court has held that a family member cannot be bypassed without a plenary hearing and proper due process — and that the incapacitated person's own prior expressed wishes must be considered. See New Jersey Appellate Court Clarifies Judge’s Role in Guardianship Cases.
When Diminished Capacity Does Not Mean Incapacity
The Court did not rule that S.T. was definitely competent, or that her attorney was wrong to have concerns. It ruled that those concerns, however sincere, had to be tested through a proper legal process before they could justify overriding S.T.'s decisions. Diminished capacity — the standard her attorney described — is not the same as legal incapacity under New Jersey law. A person can process information slowly, struggle with complex tasks, or even make choices others consider irrational, and still retain the legal right to govern her own affairs.
The distinction matters in a range of contexts beyond personal injury litigation. A person without a formal guardian has the right to make their own financial decisions, their own medical decisions, and their own legal decisions — even ones that others in their life consider harmful. Until a court makes a formal finding of incapacity through the process New Jersey law requires, that person's autonomy is legally protected.
The lesson of S.T. is straightforward. Good intentions — whether those of an attorney, a family member, or a court — do not substitute for due process. The procedures New Jersey law requires before a person can be deprived of the right to manage her own affairs exist for a reason. They are not bureaucratic formalities. They are the line between protection and the loss of liberty.