On June 5, Casey Carty, Jason Fajgier, and Bjana Swinson filed to run for Mount Holly’s Council under the slogan “Mount Holly United” in the township’s non-partisan municipal election.
The trio had been using the slogan in some form since January, and over the course of the year had purchased domain names, t-shirts, and campaign literature that featured the slogan. Now they waited for the drawing to see where their names — and their slogan — would go on the ballot this November.
Unbeknownst to the candidates, three other Burlington County residents filed a different type of document about a month later: the incorporation of a company called the “Mount Holly United Corporation.”
In a lawsuit now before the Superior Court of New Jersey, the candidates allege that the founding of the Mount Holly United Corporation was just the first step in a “dirty trick” to block them from using the “Mount Holly United” slogan on the ballot. The lawsuit also names Mount Holly Clerk Sherry Marnell, demanding an order prohibiting ballots from being printed without the slogan.
New Jersey law bars candidates from using the name of an organization in their slogan without written consent from the organization. A judge will soon have to decide whether that law also applies to corporations created after the filing of a candidate’s slogan.
The judge, Richard Hertzberg, has a limited window to issue a ruling: vote-by-mail ballots go out Sept. 21.
The document announcing the creation of the “Mount Holly United Corporation” is a vague one. The purpose of the business was listed as “general.” It names a three-member founding board: Jason Carty, a government affairs consultant, former fire chief, and current Rancocas Valley Regional school board candidate; Jules Thiessen, a sales director at an environmental testing firm and former town council candidate; and James Rydarowski, an Eastampton resident and Willingboro Fire Department lieutenant.
Jason Carty, who is unrelated to candidate Casey Carty, was arrested last October for allegedly assaulting his wife, Lumberton Deputy Mayor Gina LaPlaca. LaPlaca was also arrested in the incident. The charges against both were eventually dropped, and a judge expunged LaPlaca’s arrest.
The corporation’s founding documents sat unnoticed in the underbelly of New Jersey’s business filings for more than a month before a second, similarly vague filing arrived on Aug. 21. The Mount Holly United Corporation filed an alternative name certificate and asked to also be known as “Mount Holly United.”
When asked about the “activity to be conducted using alternative name,” Carty and Thiessen wrote, “For support of the local community.”
Thiessen, listed as the vice president of the corporation, provided an emailed statement to the Globe.
“We started this organization for the betterment of Mount Holly,” Thiessen wrote. “Our charitable causes include feeding the homeless, distributing turkeys at Thanksgiving and other local initiatives. We are unaware of any lawsuit over the name of our organization and we have not given anyone permission to use the name.”
Days after the second filing, an attorney for the Mount Holly United Corporation sent a letter to Mount Holly Clerk Sherry Marnell demanding she remove the “Mount Holly United” slogan from the ballot.
“In accordance with NJ law, Mount Holly United demands that any slogan or designation by any candidate or group of candidates for Mount Holly Town Council using the name ‘Mount Holly United’ or ‘Mt. Holly United’ be stricken from the ballot,” read the Aug. 26 letter from attorney John Adams.
Upon the submission of that letter, time was ticking. About 45 minutes later, Marnell wrote to the candidates that they needed to change their slogan by 4 p.m. the next day — 24 hours’ notice for a group that had already spent months and money developing the “Mount Holly United” slogan.
Casey Carty wrote back to Marnell the next morning, telling the clerk the move to remove the slogan may “unconstitutionally undermine our candidacy.”
“We selected ‘Mount Holly United’ in good faith, and we have already invested significant time and resources into this campaign under this slogan,” Carty wrote.
Carty also pointed out to Marnell that the corporation was only created after the group filed its slogan — but the clerk said Mount Holly’s solicitor advised “it was not protected therefore anybody could use it and protect it regardless of when it was done.”
The lawsuit says the township’s solicitor told the candidates on the morning of Aug. 29 that they missed the deadline to replace their slogan and would be placed on the ballot below candidates who had slogans on the ballot.
“That’s under litigation, there’s no comment,” Marnell told the Globe.