William Nieporte helped build an $8 billion asset management firm from the ground up. He co-wrote the company's return-to-office policy. Then his two partners used that same policy to fire him, and, he claims, to strip him of a 12% ownership stake worth tens of millions of dollars.
Nieporte, the co-founder and former chief compliance officer of Bramshill Investments, was terminated in 2022 after he failed to show up at the firm's Southern California offices five days a week. He has since filed a lawsuit seeking at least $30 million, alleging the mandate was a pretext engineered by his fellow co-founders to push him out and seize his share of the company.
The case reads like a parable for the post-COVID workplace wars, except this time, the man who ignored the rules helped write them.
Nieporte, CEO Stephen Selver, and Chief Investment Officer Art DeGaetano are all high school classmates who went on to build Bramshill Investments into a firm managing roughly $8 billion in assets across three offices. For about a decade, Nieporte served as the company's chief compliance officer.
In 2017, Nieporte moved from Southern California to San Ramon, a Bay Area suburb hundreds of miles from the firm's closest office in Newport Beach. His lawsuit claims the move was made with the full approval of Selver and DeGaetano.
That arrangement apparently worked for years, through the pandemic and beyond. But the relationship began to fracture. The lawsuit alleges that by 2021, the other two co-founders tried to force Nieporte out and offered to buy his stake. The terms of that offer are not publicly known.
In 2022, Selver and DeGaetano sent an email to all Bramshill staff. The message was blunt: return to the office five days a week by July, or face termination. No exceptions.
Nieporte's lawsuit states he "appropriately ignored the email." His attorney, Matthew Press, has argued the policy applied only to employees, not to co-founders and co-owners. Whether the policy's language actually drew that distinction remains an open question; only Nieporte's legal team has offered that interpretation publicly.
When July passed and Nieporte had not reported to Newport Beach, DeGaetano wrote to him directly. The message carried a pointed edge.
"We have both junior and senior employees commuting over one hour each way to work, and yet you feel this policy doesn't apply to you."
DeGaetano then gave Nieporte 30 days to correct course. It was a final warning, at least in theory.
What happened next is at the heart of Nieporte's legal claim. He says he used the 30-day window to revive buyout discussions with his partners, attempting to negotiate a separation rather than simply comply with the commute. But Bramshill fired him before that 30-day period expired.
The termination letter, reviewed by the Wall Street Journal, stated that Nieporte had "willfully and deliberately failed to report to 'in-person' work." The letter was signed by his co-founders, the same men he had known since high school.
Nieporte's lawsuit raises a procedural objection as well: he claims the 30-day notice was invalid because it was not delivered by hand, fax, or mail, as he contends was required. Whether that argument holds up in court remains to be seen.
The broader accusation in the filing is more serious. Nieporte alleges the entire return-to-office mandate was a mechanism to remove him from the company and claim his 12% ownership stake. He is seeking at least $30 million in lost earnings, profits, and the value of that stake.
The lawsuit was filed against Bramshill's human resources company, which has not been publicly identified. It is unclear why the suit targets the HR company rather than Selver and DeGaetano directly, and the specific court and case number have not been disclosed in available reporting.
A Bramshill spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal that Nieporte was fabricating accusations and that the legal process would show the other co-owners did nothing wrong. The firm has not elaborated publicly beyond that statement.
The dispute illustrates a tension running through corporate America right now. Companies large and small have issued return-to-office mandates since the pandemic, and employees at every level have pushed back. But most of those fights involve rank-and-file workers or middle managers, not co-founders who helped set the policy in the first place. When leaders fire their own people under contested circumstances, the fallout tends to be messy and public.
The facts here cut in more than one direction. On one hand, Nieporte lived hundreds of miles from the office and apparently felt no obligation to comply with a mandate he helped impose on everyone else. DeGaetano's message about junior employees commuting over an hour each way underscores the obvious double standard. If a rank-and-file analyst had ignored the same email, no one would blink at the termination.
On the other hand, Nieporte was not a rank-and-file analyst. He was a co-founder, a co-owner, and a decade-long officer of the company. If the RTO policy genuinely applied only to employees and not to equity holders, then the termination rests on shaky ground. And the fact that Selver and DeGaetano allegedly tried to buy Nieporte out a full year before the mandate raises a fair question about motive.
The timeline matters. In 2017, Nieporte moved to San Ramon with his partners' blessing. For four years, nobody objected. Then in 2021, the buyout attempt. Then in 2022, the company-wide mandate. Then the firing, before Nieporte's 30-day correction window even closed.
Nieporte's legal team wants a jury to see that sequence as a calculated plan to strip a co-founder of his equity. Bramshill wants the world to see a partner who thought the rules didn't apply to him.
Both stories are plausible. That is precisely why this will end up in front of a judge or a jury rather than in a press release. The question of whether prolonged absence from one's post constitutes a firing offense, or a convenient excuse, depends entirely on the fine print of the partnership agreement and the company's own governance documents.
Nieporte now works remotely for an unnamed Nevada startup. He went from co-founding a firm that manages $8 billion to working for a company nobody has heard of. Whether that outcome reflects the consequences of his own choices or the result of a boardroom betrayal is the central question his lawsuit will have to answer.
There is a broader lesson here for every executive who signs a company-wide mandate and assumes it won't boomerang. Rules imposed on others have a way of becoming weapons when partnerships sour. The post-pandemic return-to-office movement has produced plenty of friction between employers and employees, but the Bramshill case is a rarer species: a fight between founders over who the rules were really meant to bind.
Corporate America has spent three years telling workers to get back to their desks. Most of those mandates were aimed downward. In this case, the person who lost his position was the one who helped create the policy, and the ones who enforced it may have had their eyes on his equity all along.
The courts will sort out who is telling the truth. But the uncomfortable fact remains: Nieporte asked every employee in the building to show up five days a week, then decided the commute was beneath him. Whatever his partners' motives, he handed them the excuse on a silver platter.
When you write the rules and then ignore them, don't act surprised when someone else decides to enforce them, especially if your name is on 12% of the company.