The prominent New Jersey attorney who is funding the legal costs of 18-year-old Morris Catholic High School senior Rachel Canning in her lawsuit against her own parents serves on Gov. Chris Christie’s School Funding Task Force.
The attorney is John P. Inglesino, the managing partner at Inglesino, Wyciskala & Taylor, LLC, a 10-attorney firm in Parsippany, N.J.
Gov. Christie’s School Funding Task Force exists to eradicate abuse and fraud from New Jersey’s education system, explains the Common Sense Institute of New Jersey. Its goals are to study the use of free and reduced school lunches as a way of determining “at-risk” students and, generally, to pinpoint parts of the state’s school-funding formula that are subject to fraud.
Christie created the task force in March 2012 with an executive order.
Canning, a cheerleader and a lacrosse player, moved out of her home in the fall and is currently staying with the Inglesino family.
The 18-year-old adult seeks a declaration from a judge preventing her emancipation into the real world under the theory that she must remain a nonemancipated dependent. She wants her parents, Sean and Elizabeth Canning, to pay an outstanding $5,306 Morris Catholic High tuition bill. The grown woman also wants her parents to pay for living and transportation expenses for the foreseeable future. (RELATED: SPOILED BRAT: New Jersey teen sues parents because they won’t pay her college tuition)
The Cannings say their daughter left their house on her own accord.
“I’m dumbfounded,” father and retired police chief Sean Canning told CBS New York. “So is my wife. So are my other daughters.”
Inglesino was the mayor of Rockaway Township from 1996 to 2002. Now in private practice, he specializes in government law and real estate law. He is the township attorney for Parsippany-Troy Hills, and he represents other Garden State government entities in various capacities.
He brags that Politicker NJ named him among the Top 100 “powerful people” in New Jersey in 2013.
Nothing in his lengthy biography suggests that he has any expertise in education. The word “education” is, in fact, completely absent.
There are two mentions of the word “school” in the 580-word bio. One boasts that Gov. Christie named Inglesino to the School Funding Task Force. The other notes that he attended Seton Hall University School of Law.
Inglesino also once had something to do with litigation involving the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.
Thus far, an attorney (not Inglesino) who is representing Rachel Canning has racked up bills of about $13,000, according to the Daily Record.
The lawsuit is not going well, however.
On Tuesday, reports CBS New York, a judge ruled that Canning’s parents do not have to pay their grown daughter anything—at least for now.
District court Judge Peter Bogaard denied the 18-year-old senior’s request for emergency cash for high school tuition, living expenses, college tuition and legal fees.
Bogaard asked the litigants before him if it is a good idea to “establish precedent where parents live in fear of establishing rules of the house,” notes CBS.
The judge also read in open court an ugly voicemail Canning left for her mother, according to the Daily Mail. “I wanna shit all over your face,” the high school senior’s message to mom said in part.
“Have you ever in your experience seen such gross disrespect for a parent?” Bogaard asked. “I don’t see it in my house.”
At one point, the judge urged the parties to find a halfway amicable solution outside of court during the long hearing.
The next hearing in the case is scheduled for April 22.
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