Listen to this articleA former partner at a law firm with an office in Mineola has filed a lawsuit in New York federal court against the firm and its managing partner, alleging that the firm is a hostile work environment for women.
Plaintiff Laura Brancato alleges that Meltzer, Lippe, Goldstein, and Breitstone and its male partners who run the firm “sexually harass their female subordinates, make lewd and sexist jokes about women, and traffic in gender stereotypes about female lawyers.”
Meltzer Lippe, however, says these allegations are “unfounded.”
“The claims made by Ms. Brancato are unfounded and we will vigorously defend against them,” a spokesperson for the firm told LIBN.
Represented by New York-based Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel, Brancato had mostly worked in the firm’s Manhattan office. She alleges in the suit that at the firm’s “biggest networking event of the year,” a golf outing, in October of 2023, David Heymann, the firm’s managing partner, wondered aloud about Brancato and oral sex, in front of her colleagues, clients and business associates. The suit charges the firm and Heymann with violations of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, including a hostile work environment and retaliation based on sexual harassment and gender discrimination.
Brancato, according to the complaint, had promptly reported the sexual harassment internally but no one at “Meltzer Lippe did anything to discipline Mr. Heymann or address the Firm’s culture of gender discrimination.”
The complaint further alleges that prior to the outing, the firm’s founding partner, Lew Meltzer, had told Brancato about a “tradition” at the firm, in which male partners shared “dirty jokes” at the networking event. He allegedly asked that she sign a “‘waiver’ if she insisted on coming to the event, which female attorneys at the Firm traditionally do not attend.” Brancato had declined to sign the waiver, and allegedly attended the event anyway, though she and another woman allegedly were the only female attorneys there.
The jokes were about “sexual acts, women who refused to have sex with their husbands, female genitalia, male genitalia, and impotence,” according to the complaint.
Brancato was in tears over the oral-sex comment, and though she was visibly upset, no one ever acknowledged it or apologized to her, the suit alleges.
The suit also alleges that Heymann made “sexist and derogatory comments” to Brancato about her forming the Women’s Affinity Group, saying that he assumed it was “simply an excuse for women to ‘whine and complain’ or to ‘get together to play mahjong’ …. and that it would “negatively impact her promotional potential and career” at the firm. The group, though, was promoted as a “tool to recruit other female attorneys” to the firm, yet the firm did not fund any of the group’s activities in 2023 and funded only one out of seven programs in 2024.
Brancato also alleges that despite her qualifications, performance record and revenue generation, she was told she was “too impatient” to be promoted to equity partner and was instead to be promoted to income partner. Yet, the complaint alleges several male partners were immediately named equity partners upon joining the firm. The complaint also states that the firm only had one female equity partner in its 50-year history.
The suit alleges that in response to Brancato’s complaints about sexist comments and her advocacy for female professional development, the firm retaliated against her by deeming her a “poor fit for the firm culture.” The suit also alleges that she was replaced as the firm’s head of the elder law practice with a newly hired male partner, and ultimately abruptly fired in May without severance despite her strong performance record and origination of millions of dollars in revenue. The suit claims that multiple people told her that they believed she was terminated because she had committed a crime. She was allegedly barred from returning to the firm but when the firm sent her electronic files, the files had been corrupted, according to the complaint. The firm allegedly did not provide Brancato’s contact information to clients trying to reach her, according to the complaint.
Now, Brancato alleges that she will have to rebuild her practice elsewhere and that she “suffered significant emotional distress.” Among the compensation she claims she is entitled to are the receivables that she originated or billed, and her income partner bonus.
