Francis J. Brennan, III is a graduate of Dickinson College, cum laude, where he majored in Policy and Management with a concentration in Public Policy and Environmental Studies, was a Nisbet Scholar and elected a member of Omicron Delta Kappa, a national leadership honor society. As an undergraduate, he participated in a semester long program in Public Administration at American University in Washington, D.C. during which he interned with the Natural Resources Defense Council. Mr. Brennan earned his law degree from the Marshall-Wythe School of Law at the College of William and Mary in Virginia, where he was selected as a member of the Jessup Moot Court Team and the American Inns of Court.
During law school and for several years after admission to the bar, Mr. Brennan was associated with the Trenton firm Picco Mack Herbert. Thereafter, he became associated with and rose to Partner and then Managing Partner for the Trenton office of a New York law firm. Since 1996, Mr. Brennan has been the principal of his own three attorney firm in Cranbury, New Jersey. Mr. Brennan is a member of the Federal and State bars in New Jersey and Pennsylvania and is admitted to practice before the Federal Courts for the District of New Jersey, the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals and the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals.
Mr. Brennan has substantial experience in complex commercial litigation including disputes involving contracts, commercial leases, real estate and land use disputes, partnership and shareholder disputes, business law, insurance coverage issues and employment law. Mr. Brennan is also an experienced environmental litigator having both prosecuted and defended numerous complex matters including insurance coverage disputes, and clean-up cost recovery actions pursuant to the New Jersey Spill Compensation and Control Act, New Jersey's Underground Storage Tank Act, and the New Jersey Environmental Rights Act. In conjunction with that environmental practice, Mr. Brennan devotes a substantial portion of his practice to regulatory affairs at the State level including the regulation of underground storage tanks; the New Jersey Industrial Site Recovery Act (ISRA, formerly ECRA); Spill Act violations and claims; Site Remediation Reform Act issues; cleanup actions; permitting issues; the Pineland's Protection Act; New Jersey's Farmland Protection Act; and the Right to Farm Act. Finally, Mr. Brennan regularly represents clients in complex real estate and business transactions, including the purchase, sale and leasing of commercial, office and residential properties, farms, Brownfields and undeveloped sites; commercial transactions such as the purchase and sale of businesses; commercial loan transactions, commercial development and financing; and, land use, zoning, planning and historic preservation law. Mr. Brennan authored the briefs in the published Federal Court decisions in Clement v. Conrail, et al, 130 F.R.D. 530 (D.N.J. 1990); and, Clement v. Conrail, 734 F. Supp. 151 (D.N.J. 1989).
A frequent speaker on legal issues, particularly those involving business-related, environmental and transactional matters, and listed in Who's Who in American Law, Mr. Brennan has served on the Board of Directors, Chairman of the Membership Committee and as Vice-President for the Southern Middlesex County Chamber of Commerce. He is a member of the American Bar Association, New Jersey State Bar Association, Middlesex County Bar Association, Petroleum Equipment Contractors Association of New Jersey, Cranbury Lions Club, Cranbury Historical Society, the Cranbury Business and Professional Association, the Princeton Chamber of Commerce and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. An Eagle Scout, Mr. Brennan serves as an Assistant Scoutmaster with Boy Scout Troop 52, on the Finance and Planning Committee for his church, and has served as a youth sports coach.
