Famighetti & Weinick, PLLC

Who the firm speaks for

Famighetti & Weinick, PLLC takes the employee side of workplace disputes. The firm represents workers across New York City and Long Island, and its stated reach covers Suffolk County, Nassau County, Brooklyn, and Queens. Its two lawyers appear in both federal and state courts.

The firm keeps two locations. The main office is in Melville, and a second office in Middletown opens by appointment. As a reviewer, I read that Middletown office as a way to reach workers north of the city while the Melville base carries the Long Island caseload.

The firm also offers services in Spanish, listed on every page as Se Habla Español. For a workforce on Long Island and in the outer boroughs that includes many Spanish speakers, that lets a client explain a workplace problem in the language they use every day.

Focus and practice areas

The claims the firm handles

Employment law forms the whole of the firm's work. Famighetti & Weinick handles discrimination claims that turn on race, sex, gender, national origin, age, disability, religion, and sexual orientation. Each of those is a protected category under state or federal law, and a claim usually rests on showing that the category, and not job performance, drove the employer's decision.

The firm also takes retaliation, unpaid wages and overtime, hostile work environment, wrongful termination, and sexual harassment cases. These often overlap inside a single matter. A worker fired soon after reporting harassment, for one, may hold both a retaliation claim and a wrongful termination claim, and the firm can raise them together.

Sexual harassment and hostile work environment claims share a legal core. Both ask whether the conduct was severe or pervasive enough to change the terms of the job. A single serious incident can qualify, and so can a steady pattern of smaller ones, and the firm handles matters that arrive in either shape.

How these claims tend to move

Discrimination and harassment cases in New York usually begin with an administrative step. A worker often files a charge with a state or federal agency before any lawsuit reaches court, and the agency may investigate or grant permission to sue. That early filing sets deadlines, so the timing of a first call to a lawyer can carry weight.

Wage and overtime claims run on their own track. There the questions are plain: what hours a person actually worked, and what the employer owed for them under the law. Cases like these can join together when a group of employees was paid the same way, and the math of back pay often drives the outcome.

Once a case reaches court, it moves through pleadings, discovery, and, in many instances, a summary judgment motion before any trial. Discovery is where documents, emails, and sworn testimony come out, and it often shapes how a claim settles or proceeds. A worker who keeps records early, such as dates, names, and copies of relevant messages, gives a lawyer more to work with later. These are general patterns in the field, and they mark out the ground the firm's named practice areas cover.

Public workers and constitutional claims

Part of the firm's work involves people employed by the government. Famighetti & Weinick represents public employees in Section 75 hearings, the disciplinary process that tenured civil service workers in New York face when their job is on the line. The firm also brings claims under the First and Fourteenth Amendments, and it handles civil rights matters it treats as constitutional torts.

A Section 75 hearing gives a public employee the chance to answer charges before a hearing officer, who then makes findings and recommends a penalty. The employee can call witnesses and cross examine the agency's witnesses, so preparation and a command of the record matter a great deal. This is a distinct forum with its own rules, kept apart from the courts.

Constitutional claims against a government employer often center on free speech or due process, and they proceed under federal civil rights law. A public employee disciplined for speaking out, for example, may argue that the discipline crossed a First Amendment line. In my opinion this public sector focus is worth flagging, because it calls for procedural knowledge that a private sector discrimination suit does not require.

How the team is built

Two attorneys run the firm, and both hold founding partner titles. Peter J. Famighetti is an employment lawyer who practices on Long Island. Matthew Weinick is also an employment lawyer on Long Island, and he works as a litigator, so courtroom advocacy is a defined part of his role.

A two partner setup keeps a client close to a named lawyer through the life of a case. Both partners appear before federal and state courts, which matches a caseload that can reach full litigation after earlier administrative steps. The site does not state where either attorney studied or when each was admitted.

A litigator's day includes drafting motions, taking and defending depositions, and arguing before a judge. With Weinick in that role and Famighetti also carrying employment matters, the firm can staff a case through its contested stages. Both partners' names carry the firm, so responsibility for the work stays with them.

What the record shows

The firm's blog points to recent appellate work. Matthew Weinick argued a housing discrimination appeal before the Appellate Division, First Department, with oral argument on April 9, 2026 and a decision issued on May 5, 2026. That is a dated, checkable event, and it shows the firm carries a matter through the appeal stage.

An appeal at the First Department follows a trial court ruling, when a party asks a panel of judges to review the record for legal error. Oral argument gives each side a short window to answer the judges' questions in person. The gap of about four weeks between argument and decision here falls inside a normal range for that court. In my opinion, the strength of this detail is that anyone can check it: a named court, a named department, and dated proceedings leave a public record.

Housing discrimination law overlaps with the firm's civil rights and employment work, since each turns on proof that a protected trait shaped a decision. Appellate practice also draws on a separate set of skills, built around written briefs and tight framing of a legal question for the judges. An appeal that was argued and decided, with dates on the public docket, is a concrete marker of that work.