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Outgoing Hudson Assignment Judge Peter Bariso reflects on 16 years on the bench

Outgoing Hudson County Superior Court Assignment Judge Peter Bariso reflected on his 16 years on the bench during a phone interview yesterday.

Bariso, the assignment judge since February 2012, is calling it career on April 1st and will be succeeded by fellow Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Jablonski .

While Bariso, first appointed by then-Acting Gov. Richard Codey in 2005, has heard hundreds, possible over a thousand cases, in his long career there are two in particular that left a lasting impact: a jury trial involving the Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing (JONAH) and the state vs. JLG.

“The JONAH case involved a lot of research regarding the issue of same sex attractions and whether or not it was a mental disorder or not … One of the first trials I had that had interesting jury selection issues,” he told HCV.

The trial began on June 25th, 2015 a Hudson County jury found that JONAH, founded by two Jersey City couples in 1999 who claimed that they could turn gay men straight, had committed consumer fraud.

During a pretrial ruling in February of the same year, Bariso made headlines for excluding expert testimony from conversion therapy proponents since they based their ideologies on the notion that homosexuality is a mental disorder.

” … The theory that homosexuality is a disorder is not novel but – like the notion that the earth is flat and the sun revolves around it – instead is outdated and refuted,” he asserted at the time.

The case concluded by Bariso granting a permanent injunction on December 18th, 2015, forcing JONAH to shut down all operations within 30 days and pay the plaintiffs an undisclosed amount of the over $3.5 million proposed judgement.

As for the State vs. JLG, Bariso conducted a Frye hearing in 2018 to determine if Child Sexual Abuse Accommodation Syndrome (CSAAS) had any reliable basis that could be used as part of expert testimony.

“When we checked nationally, everyone seemed to accept this as a scientific certainty, but there was never a hearing to test it … The Supreme Court affirmed everything that I ruled,” he noted.

“Those stand out because of the ramifications of the decisions made and because of how important they were – two pivotal cases, you’ll never forget those.”

Additionally, Bariso said he oversaw cases involving a variety of different topics, such as medical malpractice and product liability trials, as well as election law cases.

Back in 2013, he ruled that Khemraj Ramchal, better known by “Chico,” could use his nickname on the ballot.

He ultimately won the Ward B council seat as part of then-Ward E Councilman/mayoral hopeful Steven Fulop’s ticket, though had to resign before finishing out his term due to a drink driving incident.

Beyond his work inside the chambers, Bariso was one of the leading voices in pushing to bring a new county courthouse to Hudson County and it’s clear that he’s thrilled the $310 million project is well on its way.

“I think your gonna have an impressive building that the county and its citizens can be proud of for years to come. The size of it alone … it’s gonna be a tremendous building for a long time coming and will hopefully be as lasting as the Brennan Courthouse,” he stated.

While Bariso had initially planned to retire prior to the coronavirus pandemic before he turned 66, he decided to wait until the courts functions had resumed in a smoother fashion.

However, he isn’t leaving his law career behind entirely: he’ll be returning to his former law firm, Chasan Lamparello Mallon & Cappuzzo, PC, three days a week to serve as a mentor to younger legal minds – as opposed to doing mediations and arbitrations.

As far as his successor goes, Bariso feels that Chief Justice Stuart Rabner made a solid pick.

“I’m happy with the Chief Justice’s choice of Judge Jablonski. He’s been a class act he certainly has the talent and the wherewithal and I think he has the ability, the talent, and the passion to lead a very good group of judges for the next several years,” he said.

Jablonski signed off on a temporary restraining order to hinder protests outside the home of Hudson County Executive Tom DeGise late last year and a hearing on the matter is scheduled for next month.

While Bariso declined to voice an extensive opinion on pending litigation, he remarked that “I think it’s in capable hands.”

Overall, Bariso said he will miss several aspects of being a judge when he moves on to the next stage of his career in a few weeks, but is also confident that all the pieces of the puzzle of there for things to continue operating at a high level.

“There’s a part of me that will miss with working with who I think are the best judges in the state and working with the county – particularly the past nine years with the road to the next courthouse … I’m confident that under Jeff’s leadership the vicinage, is in good hands.”

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Massive new Hudson County courthouse, with modern design and better security, on track for 2024 finish

• Updated: May. 25, 2022, 12:57 p.m.
• | Published: May. 24, 2022, 4:09 p.m.
• Jake Maher | The Jersey Journal

The new, 406,000-square-foot Frank J. Guarini Justice Complex, the future home of 24 criminal, family and other courtrooms for Hudson County, is beginning to take shape in Journal Square.

The $317 million project, financed by the Hudson County Improvement Authority and located on the block formed by Newark Avenue, Central Avenue, Oakland Avenue and Route 139 in Jersey City, is on budget and on pace to be finished in late 2024, county officials say. Mast Construction broke ground in early 2021.

About one-third of the construction is in place so far, according to county officials and Mast leadership, who provided The Jersey Journal with a tour of the site Monday.

The project is one of the county’s most ambitious undertakings in years, but promises a state-of-the-art facility when completed and a much-needed improvement on the current courthouse in terms of the flow of people and security.

Three buildings comprise the complex: a five-story building housing courtrooms and office space for administrators and the prosecutor’s office; a one-and-a-half story building housing the Surrogate’s Office and other functions that will be connected to the main building, but constructed separately; and a 471-space parking garage.

Approximately 125 workers at the bustling site pieced together the structural steel forming the skeleton of the main building’s upper levels and added in conduits, or protective tubing, for the 128 miles of computer wiring and 1,000 miles of electrical wiring the building will hold in the basement.

The workforce now is about half of the maximum of 250, all union members, who will be on site when it’s time for the interior work, like drywalling, said Ted Domuracki, president of Mast. Terminal Construction is the firm handling the on-the-ground construction work, while Mast oversees the work and reports back to the Hudson County Improvement Authority.

The towers that will become the elevator shafts and staircases, the first pieces of the main building completed, are visible from the street.

In the main building the basement is the most developed, with conduits for computer wires, fireproofing, and the beginnings of ventilation systems in place. On the third floor, the highest the building has reached so far, only the steel forming the base of the floor which concrete is poured over, is in place.

The basic structure of the 471-space parking garage, formed of 411 pieces of precast concrete, took about a month to complete.

The final piece of the project, the one-and-a-half story building with a “green roof” with grass on it, hasn’t been started yet, since the crane needed to move the steel skeleton of the main building is currently situated in the footprint of that building.

Peter Bariso, the retired former assignment judge for the Hudson Vicinage, overseeing all trials in Hudson County, worked in the Hudson County Administration Building at 595 Newark Ave., which currently houses many of the functions the new courthouse will soon hold, for nine years until his retirement in 2021.

The Administration Building’s main problem, he said, is that it is not a courthouse at all, but rather was designed originally to be an office building.

It has “tremendous” security problems, Bariso said. There is no elevator specifically for inmates, who are walked around the halls in handcuffs by sheriff’s officers, and no holding cells for defendants in the courtrooms. Everyone entering and exiting the building uses the same set of doors.

Bariso said he worked with the sheriff’s office to increase security during his time in the building, but the long-term answer is simply to create a new one.

The idea behind the design, according to Domuracki, is to create a building with separate sections depending on function and security, rather than the random mingling that Bariso described in the old building.

The first three floors of the building are a “secure unit,” Domuracki said, with a designated main entrance. Employees going to the administrative offices on floor four or the prosecutor’s office on floor five have separate entrances.

The first three floors and the top two are indeed almost separate buildings from an architectural perspective, according to Mast Vice President Paul Skabich. The lower three levels are stacked on one another, while the fourth and fifth “hang” from a shared steel skeleton.

Functions like the Surrogate’s Office and jury assembly, with high traffic and longer business hours, are clustered on the first floor so people don’t have to walk through the entire building to get to them and so they can be kept open without having to keep the entire building open.

Criminal and family courts will be on the second and third floors.

Defendants will arrive through a sally port in the back of the building where they’ll be dropped off by buses at a loading dock and brought by sheriff’s officers to holding cells in the basement via an elevator for that sole purpose.

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Judges will have their own entrance, also in the back of the building.

“A lot of people come to the courthouse and don’t necessarily need to go to court, they’re doing a lot of ancillary things, so all those ancillary things we pushed down onto the first floor to keep people from having to matriculate through the building,” Deputy County Administrator David Drumeler explained.

Bariso said he was pleased with the progress of the new courthouse. The Administration Building’s replacement, he said, has been “a long time coming.”

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Hon. Peter F. Bariso, Jr., A.J.S.C. (Ret.)

[email protected] T 201-809-6056

Hon. Peter F. Bariso, Jr., A.J.S.C. (Ret.) draws on 16 years of judicial experience as a New Jersey Superior Court Judge and more than two decades as an attorney in consulting on complex litigation matters affecting both private and public sector clients.  

Appointed to the bench in 2005 by Governor Richard J. Codey, Judge Bariso served as the Presiding Judge of the Civil Division from 2006 to 2012. He became Assignment Judge of the Hudson Vicinage in 2012, giving him judicial responsibility for all trial courts in the county, including the Superior Court and all municipal courts.

Judge Bariso was a member of the Conference of Assignment Judges as well as the Judicial Council. He was also a member of the Advisory Committee on Expedited Civil Actions where he served as the Pre-Trial Subcommittee Chair. Judge Bariso is a former member of the Supreme Court Special Committee on Peremptory Challenges and Jury Voir Dire where he served as Chair of the Civil Subcommittee. He is also a former member of the Supreme Court Civil Practice Committee.

Judge Bariso served as the Chair of the Conference of Civil Presiding Judges. He previously chaired both the Supreme Court Arbitration Advisory Committee and the Hudson County Advisory Committee on Minority Concerns. Judge Bariso is a member of the New Jersey State Bar Association, the Hudson County Bar Association and the Essex County Bar Association.

Judge Bariso frequently lectures on civil litigation issues for the Judiciary, the New Jersey State Bar Association, the Hudson County Bar Association and the New Jersey Institute for Continuing Legal Education, among other organizations. He has been an instructor for ICLE’s Civil Law segment of the Skills and Methods course for newly admitted attorneys. In 2015, Judge Bariso was the recipient of the NJICLE Alfred C. Clapp Award for Excellence in Continuing Legal Education.

Judge Bariso graduated from Rutgers University in 1976, where he received a bachelor’s degree magna cum laude and was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa honor society. He received his juris doctor degree from the Rutgers University School of Law in 1979. After law school, he clerked for Superior Court Judge J. Emmet Cassidy before entering private practice, specializing in civil defense litigation for corporate, insurance, and individual clients. In 1988, he established a successful defense firm, Peter F. Bariso, Jr., Esq. PC., concentrating in civil litigation and worker’s compensation, which merged with the Firm in 1995.  

Judge Bariso led the Firm’s Litigation Department for ten years, focusing his practice on insurance defense litigation issues related to automobile, aviation, commercial, premises, products liability, and worker’s compensation.  He was frequently appointed as an arbitrator by the Superior Court of New Jersey and worked as a court-approved mediator in complex and substantial civil matters.  He was certified by the Supreme Court as a Civil Trial Attorney.

Judge Bariso has had six trial court opinions approved for publication:

Jersey City Redevelopment Agency v. RJ Woodward, LLC , 462 N.J. Super. 27 (Law Div. 2020) Ferguson v. JONAH , 445 N.J. Super. 129 (Law Div. 2014) Dobco v. Brockwell & Carrington , 441 N.J. Super. 148 (Law Div. 2015) Town of Harrison Bd. v. Netchert , 439 N.J. Super. 164 (Law Div. 2015) Camacho v. Camacho , 381 N.J. Super. 395 (Law Div. 2005) Smith v. Moustiatse , 388 N.J. Super. 273 (Law Div. 2005)

Judge Bariso has also contributed to numerous publications used as seminar material for The New Jersey Institute for Continuing Legal Education over the past 20 years. Some of the more recent publications were seminar material for Labor and Employment Law Forum (2017); Hot Topics for Civil Litigators (2014); Effectively Using Objections at Depositions and Trial: A Crash Course from Some of the State’s Top Judges and Attorneys (2011); 2011 Civil Trial Practice: The Judicial Perspective (2011); 2010 Automobile Insurance Update: Keys for Handling the Automobile Accident Case; Keys to Jury Selection in a Civil Case (2010); Effectively Using Objections at Deposition and Trial: A Crash Course from some of the State’s top Judges and Attorneys (2008); Beyond the Court Rules: What the Presiding Judges Really Think (2008); Medicine for Lawyers: Winning Neck & Back Injury Cases (2008); 2007 Tort Law Conference (2007). He is also a contributing author on Education Law for Encyclopedia of New Jersey (2004).

No aspect of this advertisement has been approved by the Supreme Court of New Jersey Award Methodology

Practice Area

• Complementary Dispute Resolution
• Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, 1976 BA magna cum laude
• Rutgers University School of Law, 1979 JD

Bar Admissions

• Peter F. Bariso, Longtime Judge and Prolific CLE Speaker, to Receive NJSBF 2024 Medal of Honor
• Judge Bariso Holds Mock Trial for Bring Your Children to Work Day
• CLMC Attorneys to Speak at the 2023 New Jersey State Bar Association Mid-Year Meeting in Paris
• CLMC Attorneys to Receive Honors and Speak at the 2023 New Jersey State Bar Association Meeting and Convention

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August 31, 2023

City of Hoboken welcomes new municipal court judges

Mayor Ravi S. Bhalla and the City of Hoboken today welcomed Chief Municipal Judge Benjamin Choi and Municipal Judge Scott Pennington following a swearing-in ceremony at Hudson County Superior Court on Aug. 29.  

Mayor Bhalla announced their appointments in July, marking the first time in the City’s history that an Asian American and African American individual held either position.

"The appointments of Mr. Choi and Mr. Pennington mark a pivotal moment in our Mile Square,” said Mayor Bhalla. “Not only will Hoboken’s court system now reflect the increasing diversity of our city and state, but will also elevate public servants with the experience and dedication to ensure equal justice for all.  I’m proud to welcome them to their new positions.”

"I am deeply honored to be appointed as the Chief Municipal Court Judge for the City of Hoboken,” said Chief Municipal Judge Choi. “In my new position as the Chief Judge, I look forward to working with the Court Administrator, our excellent Court Staff and our newly appointed Municipal Court Judge, Judge Scott Pennington. Together, we will work to ensure that all court participants will be given an opportunity to be heard and will be treated respectfully, fairly and justly."  

As Chief Municipal Judge, Choi will be responsible for all supervisory and administrative functions of the municipal court.  

From 2009 until today, Choi served the city as the Alcohol Beverage and Control Board's prosecutor, later as the ABC Board attorney, municipal prosecutor, and municipal court judge.  

I am honored and eager to begin my role as Municipal Court Judge, dedicated to upholding the principles of fairness and justice within our community,” said Municipal Court Judge Pennington. “I look forward to serving Hoboken and working diligently to ensure a just legal process for all individuals who come before the court.”

As Municipal Court Judge, Pennington will adjudicate all complaints brought before the municipal court including disorderly persons and petty disorderly persons offenses, DUI offenses, traffic citations, and city code violations, among others.

Pennington is a partner at Bennet Pennington LLC and has served on the New Jersey Supreme Court’s Committee on Municipal Court Practice and the local Attorney Ethics Committee.

For more information, go to www.hobokennj.gov/news/mayor-bhalla-makes-historic-judicial-appointments.  

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