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Partner R. Armen McOmber and Associate Austin B. Tobin represent Azuree and Edward Albanese, and their 11-year-old daughter, L.A., in a lawsuit against the Wall Township Board of Education (“WTBOE”) as well as two music teachers employed by the WTBOE, Jessica Berube (“Defendant Berube”) and Adrienne Foutz (“Defendant Foutz”) (all collectively “Defendants”), which was filed in Monmouth County Superior Court and asserts negligence and other related claims against Defendants. On behalf of her daughter, Mr. and Mrs. Albanese seek compensatory and punitive damages.

On April 8, 2022, allegedly because L.A., a fourth (4^th) grade student at the time, was laughing in class, Defendant Berube removed a drum set from a classroom closet and forcibly placed L.A. into said closet. Thereafter, Defendant Berube walked out of the closet, closed the door, and left L.A. alone and unsupervised. Making matters worse, once L.A. was eventually out of the classroom closet, she overheard Defendant Foutz tell a student to delete a recording of the aforementioned events.

“The allegations are very disturbing. As alleged in the Complaint, Mr. and Mrs. Albanese’s 11-year-old daughter was traumatized by blatantly negligent conduct on the part of Defendants on April 8, 2022 simply because she was allegedly laughing in class. Suffice to say, no parent would approve of such horrendous treatment of one of its students. We stand shoulder to shoulder with our clients in exposing this outrageous and unlawful behavior.” R. Armen McOmber, Esq., McOmber McOmber & Luber, P.C.

Partner R. Armen McOmber and Associate Austin B. Tobin represent Christine Gallinaro, and her 15-year-old disabled son, J.G., in a Law Against Discrimination lawsuit against Cinemark Hazlet 12, a movie theater located in Hazlet, New Jersey as well as that theater’s manager, Nicole Nicolet, and assistant manager, Brandon Mansueto. The lawsuit, which was filed in Monmouth County Superior Court, alleges violations of New Jersey’s Law Against Discrimination. On behalf of her disabled son, Ms. Gallinaro seeks compensatory damages, punitive damages, and attorneys’ fees and costs.

On June 16, 2023, Ms. Gallinaro and J.G., her 15-year-old special needs son who is diagnosed with Autism, traveled to Cinemark Hazlet 12 to see a movie. During their visit, J.G. needed to use the restroom. Since the movie theater did not have a family restroom, and given that Ms. Gallinaro’s husband was not with them, she took her disabled son to the woman’s restroom. However, as they left the women’s restroom, the location’s manager angrily approached them and shouted discriminatory remarks directed towards the obviously disabled J.G., asserting that “he shouldn’t be in here [referring to the women’s restroom]” and that a “grown” man should not be in the women’s restroom. The manager then doubled down on her discriminatory rhetoric by (1) loudly exclaiming in the theater’s crowded lobby that “this [referring to the women’s restroom] is not a transgender bathroom”; (2) ordering Ms. Gallinaro and her son to leave the premises, and (3) outrageously directing the assistant manager to call the police to have them removed from the theater. Both the assistant manager and the movie theater’s security guards then publicly humiliated Ms. Gallinaro and her son by surrounding them in a hostile and confrontational demeanor. The assistant manager ultimately did, in fact, call the police to have them removed from the premises.

“The allegations are very disturbing. As alleged in the Complaint, Ms. Gallinaro’s 15-year-old son, who is diagnosed with Autism and severe speech delays, was traumatized by blatantly discriminatory conduct on the part of Defendants on June 16, 2023 simply because he needed to use the bathroom while seeing a movie with his mother. We stand shoulder to shoulder with our clients in exposing this outrageous and unlawful behavior.” R. Armen McOmber, Esq., McOmber McOmber & Luber, P.C.

As reported in NJ.com’s “Rutgers created fake jobs for graduates to boost MBA program rankings, lawsuit charges”:

But in a whistleblower lawsuit filed Friday, a Rutgers administrator charged that the university fraudulently burnished those national rankings by creating totally bogus jobs to show the success its business school graduates had in finding employment.

The lawsuit by Deidre White, the business school’s human resources manager, alleged the program used a temp agency to hire unemployed MBA students, placing them into sham positions at the university itself — for no other reason than to make it appear like a greater number of graduates were getting full-time jobs after getting their Rutgers diplomas.

“The fraud worked,” wrote White’s attorney, Matthew A. Luber of McOmber McOmber & Luber in Marlton. In the very first year of the scheme, they said Rutgers was suddenly propelled to, among other things, the ‘No. 1′ business school in the Northeast.

The university did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

By going through an outside temp agency, the lawsuit claimed the university was able to circumvent restrictions in the ranking systems that do not allow universities to count internal hires for purposes of their employment statistics.

White, 54, who alleged she was the subject of retaliation over health and other issues aimed at forcing her resignation or termination, said the university used more than $400,000 of its endowment to fund the fake positions and to pay what she called “kickbacks” to the employment agency.

Photo credit: NJ.com

Monmouth County prosecutors announced charges on Monday against multiple students from Wall High School with hazing, attempted criminal sexual contact, false imprisonment, and harassment. The charges stem from attacks that occurred in September and October 2021 in the football team’s locker room wherein one student was “held down by four or five of his supposed teammates while they try to probe him with a broom or their fingers while they’re struggling to get away,” said Armen McOmber, the attorney representing three of the attack victims. According to McOmber, his clients were “terrorized” by what happened to them.

Attorneys for the defendants are downplaying the behavior as mere locker room horseplay, however, Armen McOmber takes serious issue with that characterization. “The idea that four or five guys can hold down another student and attempt to penetrate them, the idea that that’s acceptable conduct, that’s just ‘boys being boys,’ it’s just really warped. It’s offensive and it’s sick.”

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