Witness in Ferriero trial tells of ‘threat’
March 12, 2015, 5:53 PM Last updated: Friday, March 13, 2015, 10:50 AM
By Peter J. Sampson
staff writer |
The Record
Teaneck lawyer M. Robert DeCotiis testified on Thursday that he “took it as a threat” when one of Joseph A. Ferriero’s law partners said that Hartz Mountain Industries wanted to hire Ferriero’s firm to go “scorched earth” against the Mills Corp., the DeCotiis firm’s biggest client.
DeCotiis took the stand on Thursday as a prosecution witness testifying under a grant of immunity in the federal racketeering trial of Ferriero, a former Bergen County Democratic leader.
As Bergen County’s powerful Democratic Party chairman in 2002, Ferriero was in a position to sabotage Mills’ billion-dollar shopping and entertainment center, then known as Xanadu, by going to work for the rival company, DeCotiis said.
At the time, Mills, a Virginia-based mall developer, was competing against Hartz Mountain for the right to develop state land at the Meadowlands Sports Complex in East Rutherford.
https://www.northjersey.com/news/witness-in-ferriero-trial-tells-of-threat-1.1288022