have been denied the protections afforded to them under the law and been wrongfully evicted.
C. Cases in which rent claimed included both covered period and non-covered period rent In addition to those cases in which the failure to dismiss rests on a misunderstanding of the applicable “covered period” and the associated certifications, several other situations came to the attention of the interviewers. Most of these cases involve the question of dismissal when rent claimed includes both covered period rent and non-covered period rent. The statute, however, makes no distinction between cases involving only rent that came due during the covered period and cases involving rent that came due both during and outside the covered period (“mixed-rent cases”). The law provides that “[a]ll pending eviction actions alleging nonpayment or habitual late payment of residential rent, or failure to pay a rent increase, that accrued during the covered period shall be dismissed upon certification by the tenant . . . .” NJSA 52:27D287.9(e) (emphasis added). There is no exception for mixed-rent cases. In the context of the landlord-tenant docket, this broad mandate makes sense. Unrepresented residential tenants, who are the overwhelming majority of tenants appearing in landlord-tenant court, cannot be expected to distinguish the arrears they must pay to avoid eviction from other arrears claimed in the complaint. Thus, the legislature required dismissal and refiling (with filing fees waived in accordance with subsection (f)) based on the arrears that are legally due to avoid eviction. We note that for many of these cases, if the mandate of the law had been followed when the certification was submitted, the issue of dismissal in cases involving both covered period rent and post-covered period rent would not have arisen as the cases would have been administratively dismissed before any post-covered rent was due. Burlington County Burlington-3: A nonpayment of rent case was filed in late 2021. The tenant filed a qualifying certification but the case was not administratively dismissed, apparently because the rent claimed included rent due during the extended covered period. During the case management conference, the landlord’s attorney argued that because the 15
