Law360 (September 9, 2025, 5:23 PM EDT) — Accounting firm BDO sought to fend off most of the claims in a $75 million discrimination suit brought by a former tax partner who took leave when her son had a stroke, telling a New York federal court she was not an employee protected by the laws she says the firm violated.
BDO said in a brief Monday that its former partner Eleni Lagos, also known as Eleni Tserpelis, lacked the legal basis to bring all but one of her claims against the firm because, as a partner, she was not an employee who could be fired.
Lagos, a mother of three, said in her complaint in July that BDO discriminated and retaliated against her when she was fired in April 2023 after taking months of leave to care for her son, who had suffered a brain stem stroke while playing soccer and required surgeries, hospitalizations and rehabilitation.
Her suit accused the firm of discrimination based on her sex and caregiver status under Title VII. It also said BDO violated the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Family and Medical Leave Act, the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, and New York state and city human rights laws.
But the legal basis for most of her complaint relied on what the firm called the “fiction” that Lagos was an employee of BDO, according to the filing. Lagos acknowledged throughout the complaint that she was a partner and referenced her partnership agreement, the firm said.
BDO could not hire or fire Lagos, the firm said. Her partnership interest could only be extinguished by a vote of the firm’s board of directors after they found a reason.
Further, while Lagos claimed she was supervised by individual BDO defendants in the case, she offered no facts showing how they supervised her daily work on accounting, BDO said.
Additionally, she had influence at the firm as a variable share partner, the company said. She could vote to sell the partnership, review the company’s financial statements and participate in annual meetings on operations — all of which “quash any claim of employee status,” the firm said.
Lagos also shared in the company’s profits and losses and executed a partnership agreement with the firm, BDO said.
Lagos said in her complaint that she brought in millions in revenue for the firm but was fired after being blamed for losing a client and told she underperformed for much of the time she spent as a full-time caregiver.
When she returned to work in November 2022, she was told that her tax revenue goal for the year would be nearly double other partners’ $700,000 goals — a sign she was being set up for failure as a pretext to push her out of BDO, she said. According to the complaint, a supervisor told Lagos: “Well, we’re not giving you a pass just because you were on leave. You’re going to have to make it up all in one year.”
Lagos said she complained that she was being mistreated because of the protected leave she took to support her son. But in March 2023, she was called into a meeting with a supervisor who said she had significant performance issues and needed to withdraw from the firm’s partnership or face termination, Lagos said.
She was officially fired in April 2023 for cause, she said, even though the company did not raise any valid justifications for her termination. Her termination was particularly suspect given that around the same time, BDO was preparing a major restructuring that would convert the firm from a partnership to a corporation and establish an employee stock ownership plan, which would have entitled her to millions of dollars as a full equity partner, she said.
Lagos’ suit seeks to recover more than $75 million in damages and attorney fees.
BDO argued Monday that even if Lagos were considered an employee, her suit has other flaws. For one, while she alleged BDO violated the FMLA, she requested and received even more than the law’s 12 weeks of leave, undermining her claims, the firm said. Also, while she claimed she was defamed by false statements made by BDO defendants, her complaint didn’t detail the statements or say who made them, the firm said.
However, BDO said that Lagos could continue to seek damages by pursuing her claim that the firm breached its contract with her. As a former partner, she is entitled to her partnership claims, even though “those claims cannot be proven,” the firm said.
Marjorie Mesidor, counsel for Lagos, told Law360 that BDO’s claim that Lagos wasn’t an employee “is a legally weak and sensationalist argument.”
“A partner title in large firms doesn’t automatically negate an employment relationship,” Mesidor said. “This motion is a clear distraction tactic to obscure the core issue: BDO fired our client after she took leave for her son’s stroke.”
An attorney for BDO, Michael J. Sheehan of McDermott Will & Schulte, told Law360 that BDO supported Lagos and provided months of paid leave, but that her “deficiencies as a partner” began before her son’s stroke.
“Any action taken by BDO with respect to Ms. Lagos’s partnership was wholly unrelated to the leave she was provided and due solely to her performance failures as a partner,” Sheehan said. “It is unfortunate that she is now using her son’s medical condition as a cover for her own performance issues and to draw highly inflammatory and untrue inferences about why she was terminated from the firm.”
BDO is represented by Michael J. Sheehan and Nicholas C. Meyer of McDermott Will & Schulte.
Lagos is represented by Parisis G. Filippatos, Erica T. Healey-Kagan and Loris Baechi of Filippatos PLLC and by Marjorie Mesidor and Kayla Strauss of Mesidor PLLC.