New Jersey Division of Youth & Family v. E.B. & D.W.

The opinion of the Court was delivered by

O’HERN, J.

This appeal concerns a dispute among agencies of government and a public-interest law firm about who should pay for the services of an expert witness required by an indigent defendant in a child-custody action instituted by the Division of Youth and Family Services (DYFS) in the Department of Human Services. The parties before us are Somerset Sussex Legal Services (Legal Services), which represented the indigent defendant, E.B., at trial; the Office of the Public Defender (OPD), which represented the infant, R.J.B., as Law Guardian, at trial;…