American Apparel faces a lawsuit from a former employee who claims he was wrongfully fired due to religious belief.
Former employee David Nisenbaum accuses American Apparel terminated him after he claimed he was religiously discriminated against by the former CFO John Lutterell and had reported Lutteral for financial mismanagement issue.
On April 16th three other employees also sued the company for giving them too short of a notice when being fired.
In Nisenbaum’s lawsuit it states his job was to “help upgrade the accounting and finance department.” In this position he noticed Lutterell was not representing American Apparel well financially.
He claimed between 2012 to 2013 Lutterall cost the company $30 to $40 million by going against CEO at the time Dov Charney pertaining to a distribution center project. Another time he chose not to communicate with Charney or board members once again about a financial bond resulting to the company losing money.
As far as religiously, Lutteral made statements about Nisenbaum’s Jewish belief. The suit states, “on multiple occasions, when walking behind Mr. Nisenbaum, Mr. Luttrell would make mocking gestures, pretending that Mr. Nisenbaum smelled bad.”
The day after Nisenbaum reported on Luterall for his financial irresponsibility and religious discrimination he was told his allegations were “baseless” and was let go.
Former CEO Charney was also fired at the same time in June 2014. Nisenbaum believes Charney was let go “because Mr. Luttrell wanted to sell American Apparel such that he could retire and cover up his violations of Sarbanes Oxley [legislation protecting shareholders from fraudulent company practices] and fraud in running a publicly traded company.”
Lutterell had blamed all the financial problems on Charney as he wrote in a “secret presentation” to the company’s audit committee.
An American Apparel representative spoke on the issue saying, “Generally, we don’t comment on personnel matters, especially those that precede the current management team.”
