The legal saga of NFI CEO Sidney Brown in New Jersey has come to an end.
The state’s Acting Attorney General Jennifer Davenport has decided not to appeal a recent decision by the Appellate Division of New Jersey Superior Court that upheld an earlier dismissal of the racketeering case against Brown and five others over development rights in the south New Jersey city of Camden, across the river from Philadelphia.
“Our office has decided not to seek review from the New Jersey Supreme Court in State v. Norcross,” the attorney general’s office said in a prepared statement. referring to the formal name of the case. “In light of the Appellate Division’s decision, we have concluded that our prosecutorial resources would be best spent on other matters.”
Change in office
Acting AG Davenport moved into that role with the recent inauguration of Miki Sherrill as the state’s governor. Her predecessor, Matthew Platkin, brought the case against Norcross and his associates.
Sherrill is a Democrat, as was her predecessor Phil Murphy, so choosing not to appeal the case further can not be seen as a result of a change in the political party heading the state government.
Brown, whose family founded NFI and controls the company, was enough of a side defendant in the case that the dismissal just under a year ago of the indictment brought in June 2024 by then Attorney General Matthew Platkin led the court to say of Brown and one other defendant: “What did these two men do?”
Norcross got most of the attention
The defendant in the case that received the vast majority of the public attention was George Norcross, long-time political kingmaker in New Jersey who has never held public office but yielded tremendous sway inside the Democratic party. The scenario of a Democratic Attorney General indicting a person who yielded huge power within the state’s Democratic party was headline-grabbing in both ends of the Garden State.
While Brown did not issue a comment when the appellate division’s decision was handed down earlier this month, his representative supplied FreightWaves with a statement Tuesday after the decision by the Attorney General’s office to abandon any further appeals.
“The State of New Jersey finally made the right decision today because I am, and always have been, innocent of these baseless charges,” Brown said. “Since its inception, this case was unfounded and attacked those of us who believed in the future of a thriving Camden. I want to thank the courts and the new administration for ensuring that justice was carried out based on the facts.”
Development rights battle
The indictment, powered by numerous wiretaps some of which went back eight or more years, focused on a battle between Norcross and his allies including Brown on one side, and an unidentified developer on the other, over rights in Camden. While the developer was not identified in the indictment, other legal cases surrounding the dispute revealed the Norcross allies’ dispute was with Carl Dranoff.
Brown’s interest was not only as an owner of a company seeking to develop real estate in Camden, but also as the head of truckload carrier NFI, which ultimately established its headquarters in an office building constructed on the site of some of the areas in dispute.
Some juicy dialogue came in the indictment, with statements that the charges portrayed as physical threats by Norcross against Dranoff.
But as for Brown, the few references to him in the original indictment portrayed him mostly as no more than a participant in various meetings in which the development rights battle–and the tax credits that went along with it–were discussed. The development eventually led to the construction of the TRIAD1828 Centre, which is where NFI is now headquartered.
When the original indictment was tossed out a year ago, in answer to its own question about what Brown and businessman John O’Donnell had done in connection with the Norcross group’s efforts, Judge Peter Warshaw replied: “simply nothing criminal.”
“Two sophisticated businessmen backed the right horse when it came to selecting an investment partner,” the court wrote at that time. “This partner (Norcross) may have been motivated by many things but for Brown and O’Donnell, this was about getting the buildings built and making money and that is all they did. There is no evidence that they were part of any ‘enterprise.’ There is no evidence they intended to plan, join, or assist…in committing official misconduct.”
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