JEFFREY S. MANDEL
· PARTNER, CUTOLO MANDEL,
MANALAPAN
· APPELLATE
· NEW JERSEY SUPER LAWYERS:
2009–2014
intermediate appellate court that decides
approximately 6,500 appeals and 8,500
motions each year—keeps Mandel in
constant demand. He is always willing to
assist other lawyers who have questions on
navigating the complex procedural waters
of appellate court. Others simply send him
clients on referral. The appellants themselves
enlist Mandel regularly. “The volume of work
is very high,” he says. “If you need help, ask
an appellate lawyer. We’re in the trenches.”
When Justin Furfaro was making plans
to acquire a Midtown, N. Y., watch store, he
recruited Mandel to handle the negotiation
and preparation of the contract of sale.
In it, Mandel covered legal bases Furfaro
hadn’t even considered—like protecting
him from competition with the person who
was selling the store. “Every little detail
was covered,” Furfaro says. “He doesn’t
miss a thing. I remember we were at a
wedding together one time, and he had
notes for a case stuffed in his pockets.”
Mandel’s zippy, idiosyncratic brain is the
perfect fit for appellate cases, where tiny
discrepancies and bureaucratic minutiae
can make enormous impacts.
In 2008, he argued amicus curiae on
behalf of the Association of Criminal Defense
Lawyers of New Jersey in the dramaturgical
State v. Cottle, in which the criminal defense
attorney representing a juvenile—who was
charged with and later convicted of murder—
kept a big-time secret from his client: he, too,
had been recently indicted in Essex County.
The attorney never mentioned he’d violated
a restraining order and was undergoing
psychiatric treatment as part of admission
into the Essex County Pretrial Intervention
Program (he was eventually disbarred for
professional misconduct and also failed to
successfully complete the PTI program).
Mandel submitted that public
confidence in the criminal justice system
would be “seriously eroded” if the conflict
of interest was ignored. The court agreed,
reversed the defendant’s murder conviction
and tossed his life sentence.
In other cases in which Mandel argued
for the Association of Criminal Defense
Lawyers of New Jersey, State v. Parks in
2007 reversed a defendant’s life sentence
without parole based on the misapplication
of New Jersey’s “three strikes” law. The state
Legislature amended the law slightly—
emphasizing the dates and sequencing of
previous “strikes”—while the defendant’s