In sports, it is often said that two teams cannot be deemed rivals if one of the teams wins almost all the games between the two. In law, we often speak of competing lines of cases. Yet there is no real rivalry between competing decisions when one of them spawns many decisions that recognize it as controlling law and the other is rarely cited.

In the realm of additional insured endorsement coverage cases in the landlord-tenant context, litigants often refer to rival lines of cases—Harrah’s Atl. City v. Harleysville Ins. Co., 288 N.J. Super. 152 (App. Div. 1996) (and also Franklin Mut. Ins. v. Sec. Indem. Ins., 275 N.J. Super. 335 (App. Div.), certif. denied, 139 N.J. 185 (1994)), versus Pennsville Shopping Center Corp. v. American Motorists Ins. Co., 315 N.J.Super. 519 (App. Div. 1998)—as if either line can be argued with equal persuasiveness depending on which side of the insurance policy one sits. Yet there is no true rivalry because Pennsville, which was decided on very unique facts, has not spawned even one published case and is rarely controlling. Of this we were again reminded in the recent unpublished Appellate Division case of Gateway Park v. Travelers Ins. Co., 2020 N.J. Super. Unpub. LEXIS 785.