NJ high court will not review state’s request to make Holtec return economic development funds

An attempt to wrench back $260 million in aid from Holtec International effectively ended last week when New Jersey’s Supreme Court declined to hear a state appeal of the company’s successful lawsuit.

In an order dated Oct. 15, filed Oct. 18 and distributed to media Tuesday, the highest court in New Jersey on said it would not review a lower appeals court’s 2023 decision upholding a trial court’s ruling that Holtec qualified for a state tax credit even though it did not disclose a past debarment. Matt Platkin, the state attorney general, lodged the appeal in January.

The state supreme court gave no explanation for why it would not hear the appeal.

“The New Jersey Supreme Court’s decision to deny the Economic Development Authority’s petition for certification is welcome vindication for Holtec,” a company spokesperson wrote in a statement sent to media this week. “With this matter finally behind us, Holtec looks forward to continuing its focus on developing clean energy technology to power future generations.”

This state Supreme Court’s decision sprang from a 2020 lawsuit by Holtec against the New Jersey Economic Development Authority to recover portions of a 10-year, $260-million state tax credit Holtec said the agency started withholding from the company in 2019. Holtec won that lawsuit.

The credit helped Holtec, Jupiter, Fla., build a manufacturing campus in Camden, N.J. The company decommissions power plants, makes storage containers for spent fuel and is developing small modular reactor designs as well non-nuclear energy technology.

In November, the appellate division of New Jersey’s Superior Court upheld lower court rulings that Holtec need not have disclosed, when it applied for state tax credits, that it was briefly barred from doing business with the Tennessee Valley Authority in 2010 after a bribery scandal. Holtec was approved for the tax credit in 2014 and started receiving payments in 2017.