Phillies co-owner and his sister in inheritance feud

RIBERA, N.M. - Anna Nupson lit another Marlboro Smooth as she sat in the garage that doubles as her office. The cluttered folding table beside her white Jeep is a makeshift desk. She smokes half a pack a day here, on an idyllic 40-acre ranch in the New Mexico plains - land she purchased using inheritance money from her family's tobacco business, John Middleton Inc.

The A Star M Ranch is sprawling, with its horses and alpaca, glass-enclosed artwork, and sparkling chandeliers. But an overwhelming anxiety pushes Nupson away from the opulence and into the garage.

She smokes. She screams. She stews.

"You give somebody no alternative to fight," Nupson said. "When someone has all the resources and all the power, what are you going to do? And this is my brother, for God's sake."

Her brother, John Middleton, the billionaire co-owner of the Phillies, calls the fight extortion. Nupson alleges that Middleton outmaneuvered her in the 2007 sale of the cigar company and she wants restrictions on her inheritance lifted. Middleton says those "frivolous claims" have cost him tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees.

The siblings, who have each hired private investigators to dig for compromising information on the other, are torn over vitriolic accusations - claims of fraud and evidence fabricated - detailed in Montgomery County Orphans' Court filings that have escalated since last winter.

It is an acrimonious family fight.

"Anna's decision to repeatedly lodge false allegations against me has left me with no reasonable alternative but to defend myself and my reputation," Middleton, 60, of Bryn Mawr, said in a statement. "Greed is at the core of my sister's motives, and her actions are shameful to me and my family."

Nupson, 52, wants to overturn decades-old family agreements in which she says a family lawyer induced her to agree to deals favorable to her brother. She has asked a judge to order Middleton to award her a share of the Phillies, a family-owned hotel chain, and proceeds from the $2.9 billion sale of the cigar company.

Middleton's lawyers say Nupson "may be nursing a grudge against her brother for standing firm and facing the potential economic downfall" of the family's cigar business when threatened by lawsuits in the early 2000s. They point to a lack of new evidence presented by Nupson's lawyers.

Nupson is not broke. Far from it. She receives about $2 million a year after taxes from her inheritance.

But she is restricted from unfettered access to the many millions in her trusts - including about $200 million from a 2003 buyout of the family's tobacco conglomerate.

Strict rules govern her use of the money and, among other things, prevent her from leaving an inheritance to an adopted child. Instead, Nupson, who is twice divorced, must leave the money to her nieces and nephews upon her death.

Nupson, who once battled addiction, approved those conditions more than a decade ago. Today, she says she has been sober for eight years and insists that the restrictions on her use of the inheritance money are unfair.

Her burden for persuading a judge to undo those family agreements is high. And it has all but consumed her.

Inside the garage, Nupson scribbled in red ink on documents outlining the family trusts and her brother's business holdings. She circled some passages, drew lines around others. Two ashtrays dotted the various papers. A puff from a Marlboro, then a grisly cough.

"It's too late now," Nupson said. "Shutting up won't help. I have nothing to lose."

As the youngest of three, Nupson revered her older brother. Her earliest memories are of Saturdays spent with their father, watching Middleton at wrestling meets. She went to Shipley for high school, followed her brother to Amherst College.

"I admired him so much," Nupson said. "He seemed perfect. He was so good at everything."

For Nupson, the eccentric daughter of a blue-blood family, the family always harbored concern.

In 1995, Middleton and their father, Herbert, said they worried her trusts were "vulnerable" because she faced a possible divorce, according to court records. So Nupson agreed to renounce her right to access principal funds in her trust.

At one point, in 2001, a trust document detailed how, in order to receive a quarterly check from the trust for $250,000, Nupson was required to see a psychiatrist and take Celexa, an antidepressant.

As she struggled, the family offered help, Nupson said. She cried when thinking about how kind Middleton's wife, Leigh, was during Nupson's alcohol addiction.

"My gratitude is enormous," she said. "And I thanked my brother for that repeatedly."

Her last drink, Nupson says, was July 12, 2007, at a Chili's on the way to rehab. She said she weighed 400 pounds at the time and drank half a gallon of vodka a day at her worst.

"I was going to die," Nupson said.

She is sober now. And has been, she said, since that day.

Sobriety has bred resentment over the control of her finances. Only in the last few years, she said, did the siblings' relationship deteriorate. Brother and sister have not spoken for more than a year. Nupson did not attend her niece's August wedding in Delaware.

It is time, Nupson said, to regain control. She wants the Middleton family out of her affairs.

In 2011, eight years after Middleton bought out Nupson and others from the family businesses for about $200 million apiece, she began to voice concern. In an email to a family lawyer, Bruce A. Rosenfield, Nupson referenced a potential "coming fight." She copied Middleton on the message.

"The point is I will never, ever tolerate having to go hat in hand to ANYONE EVER UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES WHATSOEVER EVER AGAIN in my life for any reason," Nupson wrote Jan. 11, 2011. "I fought long and hard to save my life. . . . Never again will I be anyone's chattel. A gilded cage is still a cage."

Nupson requested a conference call with Rosenfield - the lawyer she now accuses of misconduct - and Middleton. Her brother replied the next morning.

"Not sure why I am needed for this call," Middleton wrote in an email from his BlackBerry at 9:41 a.m. "I have told Anna that it is her decision to sue [to] overturn the trust, and I will not stand in her way."

Four years later, the two are entrenched on opposite sides of a legal battle that shows no signs of waning.

As she prepared to challenge her brother, Nupson sought opinions on her options from two law firms. Neither took the case.

But Nupson was not dissuaded. In 2014, she hired Thomas Mucci, a New Mexico lawyer with Philadelphia roots whom she had met at a Santa Fe cigar bar the year before.

Mucci has not entered a formal appearance as Nupson's attorney of record. He has attended every court hearing in Norristown as her general counsel.

Middleton's lawyers have called Mucci "the architect" of what they view as Nupson's meritless claims, and they blame him for much of the discord.

Mucci declined to comment. Nupson's other lawyers bristle at the criticism of Mucci.

"It is unfortunate that her brother and his counsel have responded by making vitriolic and unwarranted attacks on Ms. Nupson and her counsel," said Kevin Toth, one of Nupson's lawyers. "We will vigorously defend these attacks, and will not allow them to deflect attention from the merits of this case and Ms. Nupson's substantial rights under the law."

The portrait of a fractured family appeared last month inside a fourth-floor Norristown courtroom, where eight lawyers representing three Middleton siblings gathered before a judge. (While Nupson and Middleton squabble, their older sister, Lucia Hughes, has declined to join the fray.)

On this day, Middleton's lawyers were asking a judge to reject Nupson's assertions that her brother duped her in the sale of the tobacco company. The judge, who has yet to decide that, scheduled a hearing for next month to debate the exchange of relevant documents.

James T. Smith, a Middleton lawyer, predicted more than 100 depositions and millions of documents if the dispute advances. The cost, he said, would reach tens of millions in legal fees.

"This whole lawsuit," Smith told the judge, "is built on a house of cards and lies."

Middleton, wearing a red Phillies tie, sat between his lawyers. He intently followed the arguments. He exchanged awkward pleasantries with Nupson's lawyers.

In New Mexico, Nupson fretted. She listed the various causes she would support with full access to her money. She quoted Andrew Carnegie: "The man who dies rich, dies disgraced."

Five dogs, who play with sticks and bones around the garage, are trusted companions. But Middleton, she says, has enriched himself - and his children - at her expense.

"I find there is too much mixing of my brother's business and personal interests," Nupson said. "Perhaps it's too much to ask for someone to choose."

That notion, Middleton's lawyers say, is absurd. Nupson has embarked on what they called "a campaign to extort moneys." Brother and sister are estranged.

"Now," Nupson said, "I call him 'Mr. Middleton.' "

mgelb@philly.com

215-854-2928 @MattGelb