Michael A. Cedrone

Michael focuses his practice in administrative law, regulatory compliance, public procurement and government litigation as well as civil and business litigation.

Michael has served as counsel to Ewing Township, NJ, advising on a variety of municipal matters and preparing numerous ordinances, resolutions, shared service agreements and contracts. He also has extensive experience in matters pertaining to government records, including the Open Public Records Act (OPRA), and has assisted on numerous OPRA lawsuits and administrative actions, including appeals.

Michael served as a law clerk to the Honorable Joseph L. Yannotti, Superior Court of New Jersey, Appellate Division. While in law school, he was Staff Editor and Articles Editor of the Rutgers University Law Review. He was also a participant and board member of the Hunter Moot Court Competition.

Representative Experience

• Cannabis License Award Challenge – We successfully overturned the State of New Jersey’s award of medicinal cannabis licenses. The New Jersey Department of Health, the state agency responsible for soliciting and awarding medicinal cannabis licenses, awarded a total of six licenses to six different vendors under which vendors may cultivate, manufacture and dispense medicinal cannabis products to qualified patients throughout the State. We represented an unsuccessful applicant in an appeal of those license awards to the New Jersey Appellate Division, arguing, among other things, that the license awards must be reversed both because the award procedures failed to adhere to tenets of administrative due process and also because the scoring of applicants was highly inconsistent and arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable. In a published opinion, the Appellate Division agreed with our arguments, finding that the award processes administered by the Department of Health were discordant with administrative due process and that its inconsistent scoring of applicants was manifestly arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable. The Court therefore overturned the Department of Health’s license award decisions and ordered further remand proceedings for the issuance of licenses. (In the Matter of the Application for Medicinal Marijuana Alternative Treatment Center for Harvest of New Jersey, LLC, N.J. Super.  (Appellate Division November 25, 2020))

• Contract Award Defense – We successfully opposed an appeal seeking to overturn the New Jersey Division of Property Management and Construction’s award of a multimillion dollar contract for the comprehensive renovation and restoration of the New Jersey Executive State House. In a case of first impression, the New Jersey Appellate Division agreed with our argument, finding that Building Control Systems (C043), a sophisticated, complex and highly technical global mechanism involving the total integration of a building’s various control systems, does not constitute a subset of the Heating Ventilation Air Conditioning Refrigeration (HVACR) (C032) trade, such that it must be disclosed by a prime contractor in its bid pursuant to the subcontractor disclosure statute, N.J.S.A. 52:32-2b. In addition to preserving the proper award of the contract to Daniel J. Keating Company, the Appellate Division’s published opinion will serve as a seminal case for public bidding in New Jersey and the naming of subcontractors. In re Protest of Contract Award for Project A1150-08, N.J. Executive State House Comprehensive Renovation & Restoration,  N.J. Super.  (Appellate Division February 2,  2021))

Affiliations

• Princeton Bar Association

Recognition

Michael has been recognized by Best Lawyers in America as among the “Ones to Watch” in the area of Administrative and Regulatory Law, New Jersey, since 2023

Education

• Rutgers University School of Law – Camden, J.D., cum laude
• The Pennsylvania State University, B.S.

Bar Admissions

• New Jersey
• Pennsylvania
• New York

Court Admissions

• U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey