We believe that they really play hardball in New Jersey, putting NY attorneys to shame.  Here, sanctions and attorney fees seem to be the apex of unsocial behavior, and once in a while, a fist fight.  But New Jersey!!!

This story illustrates how far they would go. "A federal judge denounced lawyers at Hackensack’s Cole, Schotz, Meisel, Forman & Leonard on Thursday, and threatened them with sanctions, for trying to meddle with an opposing attorney’s personal finances.

Two Cole, Schotz partners admitted to U.S. District Judge Harold Ackerman that an associate asked a bank counsel whether a client of the firm could buy mortgages the bank held on property of litigation foe Gregg Trautmann of Rockaway.

Such purchases would have made Cole, Schotz’s client – a lender defending itself against six suits brought by Trautmann – holder of the mortgages on his home and office.

Nothing in the record explained what the Cole, Schotz associate, or the partner who authorized the inquiry, had in mind.

But Ackerman said he reached the "evil conclusion" that the goal was to control Trautmann’s mortgages so Cole, Schotz’s client, Kennedy Funding Inc. of Hackensack, could "put the squeeze, as we use that colloquial phrase, on him and on the litigation."