Posted on 07/17/2005 1:18:57 AM PDT by nickcarraway
An ex-legal assistant at a Lehman Brothers subsidiary is accusing her high-level bosses of sexual harassment that included humiliating remarks and slaps on the butt.
Maria Piccolino, 30, has sued Lehman Brothers, claiming she was fired in March from her $67,000 job at Neuberger Berman as retaliation for complaining about locker-room comments made by the firm's chief administrative officer, deputy general counsel and a managing director.
Piccolino, who worked for less than a year at Neuberger, also alleges unwanted physical advances by the firm's director of compliance and by a trader.
Lehman Brothers called the lawsuit "baseless and wholly without merit."
"Lehman Brothers intends to clear the names of those individuals who have been maligned by these false allegations," the company said in a statement.
Piccolino alleges that, in one June 2004 incident, Brad Cetron — the compliance director and one of her two bosses — grabbed her during an after-work gathering at a bar and kissed her.
She says Cetron's office handles sexual-harassment complaints.
In another alleged incident, at a bar outing, Piccolino claims a Lehman trader lifted "her skirt and smacked her buttocks twice."
"I screamed at him and hit him with my umbrella," she told The Post.
In the office, Piccolino says, chief administrative officer Kevin Handwerker spotted her bending down to plug in a hair-dryer and said: "Under Avi's desk again, are we?"
Piccolino says she reported the comment to Avi Mizrachi, a deputy general counsel. She claims Mizrachi replied that Handwerker "was just joking because he thought of her as one of the boys."
Piccolino also accuses Harold Newman, a managing director, of asking her on the phone if Mizrachi "was still reading that book on the 100 best sex positions."
Newman told The Post her allegations are "out of the blue."
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
As an aside, how someone with student loan debt could afford to live in NYC on that salary is amazing.
rent control.
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