California Business Litigation Blog

A lawsuit has been filed in the New York courts by Manhattan mom, Nicole Imprescia, against a posh, private preschool for not doing enough to prepare her four-year-old daughter, Lucia, for an Ivy League education.

Charging $19,000 a year for tuition, the York Avenue Preschool promises to provide Upper East Side children with a custom-tailored, age-appropriate education in art, music, physical activities and language. Imprescia claims the school’s laid-back teaching style caused them to fail in delivering on their promises. She says this could have sabotaged Lucia’s opportunity to be accepted into an elite private school and thus irrevocably hindered her chance to be accepted into a top U.S. college.

Although the year-round school offers its young pupils access to teachers with master’s degrees in early childhood education, the curriculum is largely the same as any preschool classroom – learning the alphabet, singing songs and finger painting – except for the French lessons given to the four-year-old children.

Imprescia claims her daughter wasn’t properly prepared for the standardized Educational Records Bureau (ERB) entrance test used by highly-competitive private elementary schools in New York City, including Dalton, Chapin and Spence. Instead, Lucia and her peers were taught their colors and shapes.

The Imprescia family lawyer is equating the situation to theft and false advertising, saying Imprescia was duped into believing the thousands of dollars would be money well spent on a first-class education. Imprescia says her daughter was forced to mingle with two-year-olds and basically spent her days playing instead of learning. She pulled her daughter out of the school less than one month after enrolling in the fall of 2010.

Imprescia is seeking class action status for the lawsuit. The case has also sparked widespread debate in media outlets and online about the cost versus the quality of an elite education and the high expectations that are being placed on very young children to succeed.

York Avenue officials released their own statement to the media, saying these are the first charges brought against the preschool in its 30-year history and that they hope Lucia has found a school that better fits her needs.

Employment law as it pertains to public employees in Wisconsin is set to undergo a significant transformation if and when the state Senate passes Governor Scott Walker's controversial Budget Repair Bill. The specifics of the legislation were made public in early February, with the Assembly approving the bill on February 25. It remains unclear when the proposed law will be subject to a vote in the Senate.

No matter which side of the aisle one sits, it is indisputable that the proposed legislation is poised to drastically alter how public sector unions function. Employers impacted by the potential changes will be need time to adjust their practices to adapt to a new employment law landscape, though certain portions of the legislation would necessitate almost immediate changes for public sector unions and their membership.

The Governor maintains that the bill offers the only hope of preventing significant pubic employee layoffs resulting from the state's growing financial instability. While Mr. Walker has provided a great deal of information intended to support his party's position on the proposed legislation, opponents and public sector union s have disputed the bill's necessity and have organized large-scale demonstrations at the capitol over the past few weeks. The Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission (WERC) estimates that upwards of 200,000 individuals represented by 2,000 collective bargaining units in Wisconsin could be affected.

Among the possible change for public employees (with the exception of some public safety personnel) are:

Limitations on collective bargaining, including a prohibition on bargaining over issues not under the umbrella of the Wisconsin Municipal Employment Relations Act would be enacted. Preliminary certification elections would occur in April 2011 to decide if bargaining unit members desire continued union representation, or else face decertification. Union contracts would be limited in duration, dues could no longer be required for union membership, and collection of dues through salary deduction would become illegal.

Covered employees would pay one-half of retirement contributions as prescribed by the Employee Trust Fund Board, and it would no longer be permissible for most public sector employers to make employee-required contributions on their behalf.

Employer categories affected by the legislation would no longer be permitted to pay greater than 88 percent of the average cost of group insurance plans falling into the cheapest employee premium tier.

The employers specified in the law would be permitted to fire public sector employees taking part in strikes, work stoppages or other organized protests, or those missing work without prior authorization for a period exceeding three days.

Because of the substantial potential changes embodied in the proposed legislation, public sector employers are well advised to monitor developments in the capitol as they continue to unfold.

Continue reading "Wisconsin's Budget Repair Legislation's Potential Impact on Collective Bargaining" »

Five teens in southern Nevada have been charged with the distribution of child pornography stemming from an incident of apparent sexting.

Nationwide efforts are being made to establish sexting as a legitimate crime in the minds of youngsters.

All five teens are under the age of 15 and will be facing disciplinary action at school as well as in a court of law.

According to police, two teens were discovered viewing nude images of three different girls, ages 12 and 13. The pictures were apparently taken by the girls themselves, texted to another boy, and then distributed by the boy via text message.

The charges will be reviewed and punished after an assessment by the District Attorney, a judge, and a juvenile probation officer.

According to Nye County Sheriff Tony DeMeo, parents and communities nationwide should consider the incident a wakeup call. Teens are not always mature enough to handle cell phones responsibly, nor are they able to gauge the impact of such actions on their futures, DeMeo adds.

Unfortunately, such practices are growing in popularity.

Eli Cline, an eighteen-year old female, claims that teens are only thinking in the moment. According to Cline, middle and high school kids are only worried about being accepted in the now, and the future isn’t given much thought.

Cline thinks that the best way to address the problem is through shared responsibility and suggests that law enforcement officials give seminars in the school to warn of the dangers of sexting.

Sheriff DeMeo agrees that something must be done, noting that he would be more than willing to assist the school district in educating students about the consequences of sharing sexual material via texting.