Former KPMG senior director files NJ lawsuit alleging FMLA termination

Brigid Breen filed an employment-discrimination complaint against KPMG LLP on March 4, 2026 in the New Jersey Superior Court for Bergen County, docketed as BERL002731-26, alleging termination while on approved FMLA leave. The publicly noted filing identifies Breen as a former senior director and reflects an initial procedural posture with no motions or hearings disclosed in the materials provided.

The available filing summary does not list a damages demand or the plaintiff’s counsel, and it contains no quoted excerpts beyond the single-line allegation that the termination occurred while Breen was on approved FMLA leave. The complaint itself and the Bergen County docket have not been made available in full through the materials supplied, so statutory causes of action beyond that FMLA allegation and the factual timeline for leave and termination are not yet documented here.

The Breen filing arrives against a documented history of gender- and leave-related litigation involving KPMG. In a separate federal action filed on June 2, 2011 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Donna Kassman brought a purported class action alleging systemic gender discrimination and sought hundreds of millions in damages. That 2011 complaint characterized the suit as being filed “on behalf of a class of thousands of current and former female employees who have worked as Managers at KPMG from 2008 through the date of judgment” and said it aimed “to put an end to the systemic gender discrimination at KPMG.”

Kassman’s pleadings and related materials set out specific allegations used to show a pattern of treatment; the filings stated, “Despite Plaintiff Kassman's long tenure and stellar performance, KPMG refused to promote her along the partnership track,” and recounted that “two male employees complained that she was ‘unapproachable’ and ‘too direct,’ thinly-veiled gender-based criticisms designed to derail her career advancement.” Other language in that matter included the complaint claim that Kassman’s salary was “inexplicably docked $20,000 when she went on maternity leave,” and that a male supervisor allegedly told her she did not need the money because she “had a nice engagement ring.”

The Kassman litigation expanded beyond the original named plaintiff. At different stages materials indicated additional named plaintiffs and varying class-size estimates: four named colleagues—Linda O’Donnell, Sparkle Patterson, Jeanette Potter and Ashwini Vasudeva—were reported to have joined, and other filings listed Tina Butler, Cheryl Charity, Heather Inman, Nancy Jones and Carol Murray as new named plaintiffs. Reported figures for the monetary demand and class size diverge across materials—commonly cited here is a $350 million demand from the 2011 complaint, while some reports referenced $400 million or projected a Title VII class “more than 10,000 women,” and at one point more than 1,000 current and former employees were said to have joined the class.

Pleadings in the Kassman matter named specific plaintiff-side counsel and also show inconsistent firm naming across documents; one set of case materials lists Janette Wipper, Siham Nurhussein, and Deepika Bains of Sanford Wittels & Heisler, LLP as counsel, while other materials reference Sanford Heisler Kimpel LLP. The records supplied for the Breen filing did not identify counsel for either side.

KPMG is identified in historical materials as an audit, tax and advisory services firm with global operations headquartered in the Netherlands and U.S. offices headquartered in New York City; one 2010 figure cited global revenues of $20.63 billion. The supplied materials for the Breen complaint include no corporate response from KPMG.

The Breen complaint is a new state-court action that adds a specific FMLA-termination allegation to KPMG’s litigation history; the June 2, 2011 Kassman class-action remains the most detailed prior public challenge alleging systemic gender discrimination, with multiple named plaintiffs and variable reported damage and class-size figures across available documents.