On Tuesday, lawyers for embattled Camden City influencer George Norcross moved to dismiss a 13-count racketeering indictment alleging that he conspired with a group of corporate executives, elected officials, and his own brother to direct redevelopment efforts in the city to their own benefit.
Norcross, the founder and executive chair of insurance brokerage Conner Strong & Buckelew and chairman of the board at Cooper Health, was charged in June with operating an organized criminal enterprise.
Also accused in that same indictment are his brother, attorney Philip Norcross of the Mount Laurel-based Parker McCay law firm; his personal attorney, William Tambussi of the Haddon Township firm Brown and Connery; former Camden City Mayor and current CEO of Camden Community Partnership Dana Redd; Sidney Brown, CEO of trucking and logistics company NFI; and John O’Donnell, COO of residential development company The Michaels Organization.
All six co-defendants joined in the motion to dismiss.
Attorneys Yaakov Roth and Harry Graver of the Washington, D.C.-based Jones Day filed the 55-page brief in Mercer County Superior Court along with attorney Michael Critchley, Michael Critchley Jr., and Amy Luria of the Roseland, New Jersey-based Critchley & Luria, LLC.
Their motion, which is punctuated with lively turns of phrase, leads off by describing the 111-page indictment as “a crime thriller with no crime,” and George Norcross’ alleged behavior as “ordinary economic bargaining among sophisticated businessmen.”
It argues that the 13 counts of alleged criminal threats and official misconduct with which the defendants are charged amount to little more than tough talk that’s commonplace in business conversations among high-level decision-makers, and that such behavior that is “normal conduct” even among elected officials overseeing public-private partnerships.
George Norcross’ attorneys assert that “the absence of any underlying crime” collapses the conspiracy and criminal enterprise charges for want of evidence of either, and further, that the incidents invoked in constructing the prosecution’s argument are not prosecutable within the statute of limitations for those alleged crimes.
In the use of “ordinary commercial bargaining and posturing,” violent language is par for the course, but not illegal, the motion claims. Moreover, its authors argue that such dialogue did not directly compel behavior that rises to the level of official misconduct on Redd’s part.
In 2016, George Norcross is alleged to have told developer Carl Dranoff, from whom he was trying to acquire a view easement and redevelopment rights in downtown Camden City, “if you f–k this up, I’ll f—k you up like you’ve never been f–ked up before. I’ll make sure you never do business in this town again.’”
Despite the tough talk, the two men ultimately came to terms, with Dranoff accepting nearly $2 million from buyer Liberty Property Trust for his view easement and redevelopment rights.
If George Norcross’ advisors urged Redd to stop returning Dranoff’s calls, or to condemn his easement in order to leverage Dranoff into selling it, the motion countered that “No condemnation action ever happened (the City never did it); nor is there any allegation that such a suit was ever used as a threat to press Dranoff to cave.”
Similarly, Norcross’ attorneys argue that when Philip Norcross urged Camden City to terminate Dranoff’s redevelopment option for the Radio Lofts building, it was merely in his capacity as a private citizen, and not as a racketeer.
“There is no allegation that any member of the Enterprise acquired Dranoff’s Radio Lofts rights,” George Norcross’ attorneys wrote.
In 2018, after the city moved to terminate his option, Dranoff sued, and eventually settled the case last year, turning over the redevelopment options, $3.3 million in cash, and other assets in the process.
Finally, the motion argues that Philip Norcross allegedly ran off Cooper’s Ferry Partnership from its planned acquisition of the L3 Complex as a future site of Cooper Health offices because Cooper’s Ferry “did not know what they were doing” and “would fail.”
When Philip Norcross allegedly told Cooper’s Ferry leadership that the entity was “not allowed” to hire an out-of-state redeveloper for the project, even at more favorable terms than those offered by a local firm, that instruction was received as an implicit threat.
However, that interpretation was “based not on what was said but on who said it,” his attorneys argued: “As the [Cooper’s Ferry] CEO allegedly saw it, the Norcrosses were powerful in New Jersey, and were not known as happily spurned men,” they wrote.
The result of that action, however, was that Cooper’s Ferry caved, went with Philip Norcross’ chosen investor for the L3 site, and that “Cooper Health later moved hundreds of personnel into the building, and then received incentive tax credits from New Jersey,” according to George Norcross’ attorneys.
But they argued that those tactics comprise “ordinary commercial bargaining and posturing,” citing case law that upholds that “there is nothing inherently wrongful about the use of economic fear to obtain property.”
“When private parties are negotiating an exchange of property, it is perfectly appropriate — and neither ‘wrongful’ nor ‘unlawful’ — to leverage fear of related economic loss as a way to get a deal done,” they wrote.
“That is hard bargaining, not criminal extortion or coercion.
“At bottom, ‘threats’ about the business consequences of refusing to reach business deals in business contexts are ubiquitous—and there is no precedent for criminalizing them,” they continued.
Even if Philip Norcross were threatening the CEO of Cooper’s Ferry Partnership for failing to use his brother’s preferred developer, the attorneys argued that the consequences would be economic — withholding funding, or removing the Cooper’s Ferry CEO with the leverage of board seats on the organization — not criminal.
“Extortion is ostensibly the heart of this indictment,” they wrote. “But it fails to grasp the key distinction between unlawful threats and ordinary hard bargaining. The indictment tells a story of defendants hustling, cajoling, lobbying, and networking — all in an effort to push Camden’s Waterfront redevelopment past those who would stymie it. But all of that arm-twisting and maneuvering is routine in both business and politics. Much of it is constitutionally protected. None of it is remotely criminal.”
Similarly, although Redd is charged with alleged official misconduct, George Norcross’ attorneys argued that those allegations are nonspecific and too generalized to convict her of corruption.
“Official misconduct requires a misuse of office,” they wrote; “it does not include every bad or self-interested act performed by someone who happens to be a public official.”
Continuing, they argued that “New Jersey’s official misconduct statute is not a roving license for prosecutors to combat every act they deem a ‘breach of good judgment’ … or to enforce the ‘general [ethical] standards’ of public office.”
If Redd decided not to return Dranoff’s calls, to slow-roll his redevelopment interests, or to help broker redevelopment deals for the benefit of the city, none of those alleged actions rose to the level of criminality, the attorneys claim.
“What the Indictment describes is routine politics at most, without a whiff of wrongdoing,” they wrote.
“No binding legal duty instructs a mayor when she can (or cannot) suggest or facilitate meetings or try to build consensus among local civic stakeholders,” the motion continued.
“None exists. Nor would it make sense in a representative and participatory democracy to so limit public officials.
“Ultimately, the Indictment seems to bristle at the fact that the Mayor was especially responsive to the wishes of certain constituents,” the attorneys wrote.
“But that is politics, not a crime.”
The motion concludes by arguing that the seven-year statute of limitations for official misconduct has long been exceeded by reference to the alleged behaviors of the defendant, which were to have occurred 10 and 11 years earlier. The extortion and coercion charges were similarly outdated, the attorneys argued, in that they allegedly occurred longer than five years ago.
Finally, George Norcross’ lawyers claim that the defendants were correctly awarded Grow NJ tax credits for their investments in Camden City according to the language of the program constraints, which means those credits “cannot be recast as ‘proceeds’ of criminal activity.”
“Whatever alleged threats nearly a decade ago may have facilitated certain real-estate deals, and in turn Camden’s redevelopment, and in turn the creation of jobs, and in turn the provision of tax credits, they cannot properly be prosecuted now,” they wrote.
“Those supposed crimes are not revived in perpetuity just because the redevelopment continues to generate income, in the form of tax credits or otherwise. And without the tax credits, there is nothing left to render any of these charges timely.”
The State is expected to answer the motion to dismiss. Stick with NJ Pen for updates.
