By: Daniella Doria
Christina Flores, 33, claims Dr. Ryan Neinstein — a board-certified plastic surgeon with more than 40,000 followers on Instagram — didn’t care about her health after she tested positive in December 2020. Flores was Neinstein’s office assistant. He instructed her to work from home even as her symptoms worsened, according to the filing in Manhattan Supreme Court, the New York Post reports.
“Every day was constant calls, texts, emails,” she told The Post. “He was relentless and the more I tried to work through it, it just wasn’t good enough for him.”
The doctor continued to put pressure on Flores, and ultimately allegedly asked her to “immediately use a nasal rinse and virus-killing nose swabs in order to generate a false-negative Covid test that would illegitimately justify her returning to the office,” the suit charges. “Every day was constant calls, texts, emails,” she told The Post. “He was relentless and the more I tried to work through it, it just wasn’t good enough for him.”
Priscilla DeGregory of The New York Post reports, “The doctor continued to put pressure on Flores, and ultimately allegedly asked her to “immediately use a nasal rinse and virus-killing nose swabs in order to generate a false-negative Covid test that would illegitimately justify her returning to the office,” the suit charges. When she eventually came back to the office, located inside Bergdorf Goodman, she felt she became Neinstein’s “target.”
“He gets away with it,” Flores said. “He’s a plastic surgeon in Manhattan. He feels he has money and power.”
The New York Post reports Flores, “finally tested negative on Dec. 25 and returned to work soon after. But she alleges the doctor treated her poorly when she came back, and she quit on March 21, 2021.”
“I returned back to work and I felt like was a target for him,” Flores said. “He treated me so poorly. He always talked down to me. It was never good enough.
“I felt like it was retaliation because I had time off,” Flores added. “But I was working from home. I never took the time off.”
“This profit-hungry doctor risked the lives of every employee and patient while unlawfully discriminating against Ms. Flores,” Blit told The Post. “Because Ms. Flores bravely refused to fake a covid test she was retaliated against in a clearly frivolous lawsuit for millions of dollars that will be immediately tossed by the court.”
“Ms. Flores’ ultimate victory will serve as a deterrent to other scoundrels out there that want to illegally jeopardize the health and safety of their clients and employees,” Blit said.
Lawyer Steve Polyakov denied Flores’ allegations and said his clients – the practice and Neinstein – “are dedicated to the overall health and well-being of their employees and patients.
“Neinstein Plastic Surgery, PLLC is an equal opportunity employer. We take allegations of discrimination and harassment seriously.”
“We deny all of Ms. Flores’s allegations of wrongdoing and look forward to the opportunity to establish a complete and factually accurate account of the underlying events,” Polyakov said.
Flores, who now works at a different practice, said she doesn’t want anyone else to go through what she did with the doctor and “how unethical he is.”
