delivered the opinion of the Court.
In
Simon v. Cronecker,
189
N.J. 341, 915
A.2d 510,
*348 In this appeal, the only issue before us is whether the rule of law announced by the appellate panel in Randa, which we essentially affirmed in both Cronecker and Randa, is to be retroactively applied to the facts of this case. That issue comes to us as of right based on the dissent in the Appellate Division. R. 2:2-1(a)(2).
To frame the issue, a briеf recitation of the relevant facts will suffice.
I.
A.
In 1999, at a public auction, plaintiff Anthony Malinowski purchased a tax sale certificate for property located in Raritan Borough. After waiting more than the two-year period required by N.J.S.A. 54:5-86, plaintiff filed a complaint to forеclose on the tax certificate. The complaint named the property owner and the holder of a mortgage as persons having the statutory right to redeem the certificate. The last date for redemption was set for March 1, 2004. The failure to redeem the certificate would result in final judgment in favor of plaintiff, who would then take fee simple title to the property.
On February 24, 2004, Cherrystone Bay, LLC (Cherrystone), purchased the mortgage, allegedly, for $55,900 — the value of the mortgage. Plaintiff later questioned whether Cherrystone in fact paid that sum of money. Cherrystone, now as the mortgage holder, asserted that it had the statutory right to redeem the tax certificate. Without intervening in the foreclosure action, Cherry-stone then made various attempts to redeem the certificate, valued at over $49,000, in the tax collector’s оffice. 1 The details of those *349 efforts are not relevant to this appeal. On March 3, 2004, judgment was entered in favor of plaintiff, foreclosing on the tax sale certificate. The next day, unaware that judgment had been entered, Cherrystone redeemed the tax certificate.
Cherrystone then filed for the first time a motion to intervene in the foreclosure proceedings in the Chancery Division and to vacate the final judgment. The trial court denied Cherrystone’s motion. While Cherrystone’s appeal was pending, the Appellate Division decided Rando.
B.
In a split decision, the Appellate Division held in an unpublished per curiam opinion that “Simon v. Rando announced a new rule that should have only prospective application.” The majority contended that before Rando, questions concerning whether a third-party purchaser/assignee paid nominal considerаtion for a property interest were typically resolved “after an attempt to redeem.” The majority recognized that the rule in Rando “now requires that the resolution of these disputes be triggered by a motion to intervene prior to an attempt to redeem.” While expressing some concerns about “whether this new rule provides an efficient method of resolving [nominal consideration] disputes,” the majority declined Cherrystone’s invitation to reach a different conclusion than the Rando panel.
The majority determined, however, that the “new rule” should not be applied retroactively. The majority maintained that neither preexisting case law nor the customary manner in which courts had handled redemption challenges would have placed Cherrystone on notice of a duty to intervene in a foreclosure action before seeking redemptiоn. In the majority’s view, Rando interpreted N.J.S.A. 54:5-98 (“redemption shall be made in that cause only”) in a way that it had “never before been understood by the courts or practitioners.” Concluding that Rando announced a new rule of law and fearing that retroactive application “could *350 have inequitable consequences,” the majority decided to apply Rando prospectively only.
In a dissenting opinion, Judge Payne expressed her view that Rando did not announce “a change in the law,” but merely applied existing rules to a new factual variant “of alleged intermeddling” in the redemption process. For that reason, Judge Payne could “find no principled reason why [Rando ] should not be retroactively applied.”
Judge Payne placed N.J.S.A. 54:5-98 and 54:5-89.1 in historical context. Those statutes mandate that after the filing of a tax sale foreclosure complaint, a third-party investor who acquires an interest in the subject property must intervene in the foreclosure actiоn before redeeming the certificate. Judge Payne stated that N.J.S.A. 54:5-98
provides, and has provided in substantially similar form since amendments to the Tax Sale Law in 1928, [L. 1928, c. 211, § 49], that “[a]fter the complaint [for foreclosure] has been filed redemption shall be made in that canse only, provided notice of thе suit has been filed in the office of the tax collector.” (Emphasis supplied.) Parties who hold a recorded interest and have either appeared or defaulted may thus redeem until final judgment is entered, and their redemption will be deemed “in the cause.” However, parties who do not hold a recorded interest and thus were never parties to the foreclosure proceeding, must move to intervene.
This procedural requirement of intervention appears as well in N.J.S.A. 54:5-89.1, which as enacted in 1954, [L. 1954, c. 186, § 1], provided that the holder of an unrecordеd interest in property would be barred by the foreclosure action “in the same manner as if he had been made a party to and appeared in such action, and the judgment therein had been made against him as one of the defendants therein.” However, the statute prоvided additionally that such a holder, upon recordation of his interest, “may apply to be made a party to such action.”
Significantly, the intervention procedure set forth in N.J.S.A. 54:5-89.1 was amended in response to the abuses of the tax sale process by heir hunters identified by the Supreme Court in its decision in Bron v. Weintraub, 42 N.J. 87[,199 A.2d 625 ] (1964).... As amended, N.J.S.A. 54:5-89.1 [L. 1967, c. 149 § 1] permits scrutiny of proposed intervenors, (including heir hunters) prior to foreclosure ____
Thus, Judge Payne determined that the requirement that a third-party investor intervene in a tax sale foreclosure “is integral to the Legislature’s response to the abuses illustrated in
Bron.”
She also disagreed with the majority that the statutory intеrven
*351
tion requirement has “been commonly ignored.” To highlight this point, Judge Payne cited to
Savage v. Weissman,
355
N.J.Super.
429, 443,
Judge Payne reasoned that a soрhisticated commercial entity such as Cherrystone should have been aware of the statutory procedures and decisional law governing redemption, and that Cherrystone’s failure to intervene in the foreclosure action before attempting redemption leads to the “inference that it sought to avoid the scrutiny of its business transactions that would have occurred if intervention in the cause had been sought as required by N.J.S.A. 54:5-89.1.”
Based on the dissent in the Appellate Division, plaintiff appealed to this Court as of right pursuant to Rule 2:2-1(a)(2). We now reverse the appellate panel, substantially for the reasons given by Judge Payne in her dissenting opinion. The logic of that conclusion leads us to hold that Cronecker and Rando must be given retroactive effect. We add the following for the sake of clarity and to elucidate further the reasons for our decision.
II.
The principles enunciated in our decisions in Cronecker and Rando, аnd in Judge Payne’s dissent, come from a straightforward reading and interpretation of the governing statutes. We are merely applying the rules in effect at the time of the decisions in those cases and in this case. Because there is no new rule of law and because the partiеs and their lawyers are presumed to know the applicable statutes, it would be inequitable to plaintiffs to apply our decisions prospectively.
*352
We begin by noting that judicial decisions generally apply retroactively.
Green v. Auerbach Chevrolet Corp.,
127
N.J.
591, 600,
In confirming that a third-party investor has a statutory requirement to intervene in a tax foreclosure action in the circumstances presented in
Cronecker
and
Rando,
we are not overruling precedent. Indeed, those cases were foreshadowed by the Appellate Division’s ruling in
Savage.
As discussed in Judge Payne’s dissent,
Savage, supra,
explained that “to allow a party which obtains an interest in the property after the filing of the complaint to proceed directly to the tax collector” without first intervening in the tax sale foreclosure action would violate both
N.J.S.A.
54:5— 89.1 and 54:5-98. 355
N.J.Super.
at 443,
*353
Thus, we cannot conclude that Cherrystone “reasonably relied on a plausible, although incorrect, interpretation of the law,” or that “a member of the public could reasonably have relied on a different concеption of the state of the law.”
SASCO 1997 NI, LLC v. Zudkewich,
166
N.J.
579, 594,
N.J.S.A.
54:5-98, which has remained unchanged for decades, provides that “[a]fter the complaint has been filed redemption
shall
be made
in that cause only.”
(emphasis added). That legislative directive is reinfоrced by
N.J.S.A.
54:5-89.1, which provides that a third-party investor shall not “be admitted as a party to [a tax sale foreclosure] action, nor shall he have the right to redeem the lands from the tax sale whenever it shall appear that he has acquired such interest in the lands for a nominal сonsideration after the filing of the complaint.” For the reasons we expressed in
Cronecker,
we do not see any ambiguity in the text of those statutes. Nor have we found any relevant statutory history inconsistent with our reading of those statutes.
Cronecker, supra,
189
N.J.
at 335-38,
We are not swayed by Cherrystone’s argument that we should interpret N.J.S.A. 54:5-89.1 and 54:5-98 in line with the purported customs of somе practitioners. A statute is no less clear merely because those who should abide by its dictates decide to disregard them. Prospective application would allow practitioners who have *354 chosen to ignore the clear import of the Tax Sale Law to benefit from their transgressions.
Last, both Cherrystone and the appellate panel majority suggest that compliance with the statutory language of N.J.S.A. 54:5-89.1 and 54:5-98 may be inefficient in practice. The Legislature, however, has placed the safeguards embodied in those statutes into place for policy reasons pertaining to the integrity of the redemption process. We do not pass on the wisdom of statutes or substitute our preferences for the policy choices made by the Legislature. Our role is simply to give meaning to the clearly expressеd words in the Tax Sale Law, N.J.S.A. 54-1 to -137.
III.
For the reasons expressed, we reverse the decision of the Appellate Division and reinstate the judgment of the trial court.
Opposed — None.
Notes
Plaintiff claims that the property is worth approximately $415,000. He complains that Cherrystone stands to make a $300,000 profit for an investment of just over $100,000 (cost of the mortgage and redemption of the tax sale certificate).