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#NYC plastic surgeon asked ex-employee to work with COVID: suit

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“NYC plastic surgeon asked ex-employee to work with COVID: suit”

An Upper East Side plastic surgeon forced a staffer to work throughout her COVID-19 illness — and even asked her to fudge her test results so she could return to the office sooner, she alleges in a new lawsuit.

Christina Flores, 33, claims Dr. Ryan Nenistein — 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, instructing her to work from home even as her symptoms worsened, according to the filing in Manhattan Supreme Court.

“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.

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.”

Christina Flores alleges Dr. Ryan Neinstein asked her to alter her COVID test to produce a false negative so she could return to work sooner.

Flores, of Midtown, started working at Neinstein Plastic Surgery as the non-surgical Aesthetic Practice Manager in November 2020, and tested positive for the coronavirus just a month later, on Dec. 1.

Instead of giving her some time off as she battled the bug, Neinstein allegedly told Flores to continue working from home, which she did because she was “fearful of losing her job,” the filing states.

“I had no choice but to abide by his command,” she told The Post.

While her symptoms grew more severe — including a suffering from a high fever and headaches — Flores’ boss texted her on Dec. 4 saying “[the office’s] voicemail does not work…I don’t care what you’re doing. I want it fixed in next 15 minutes,” the suit claims.

Christina Flores says that Dr. Ryan Neinstein did not care about her health.

That same day Neinstein texted Flores, “I understand you’re sick, but if you can’t do your job I will find someone else,” the court documents allege.

Flores continued to test positive for the virus, and on Dec. 11 received a text from the doctor saying: “Clearly we need managers in [the office] open to close. Remote leadership is not working,” according to the filing.

At the same time, Flores said her personal doctors told her, “Your body needs rest. That’s why you’re not healing. That’s why you’re testing positive.”

“[Neinstein] really didn’t care about me or my health,” she claimed.

The doctor allegedly asked Flores on Dec. 21 to take the test that would have generated a bogus negative result — but she didn’t fulfill the request at the advice of another physician at the practice, according to the suit.

“I cannot believe he would want me to jeopardize putting not only myself, the staff, but especially the patients at risk by falsifying the COVID test,” Flores said.

She 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.”

Flores noted that she had initially passed on a job offer at Neinstein’s practice, after he allegedly interviewed her in the operating room while conducting liposuction on an unconscious patient.

The office manager, 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.”

“How he interviewed me while a poor patient was on the table not aware,” she said. “And how he treated me when I had COVID.”

Neinstein Plastic Surgery filed its own lawsuit against Flores in March 2022, alleging that she poached employees and clients from the practice.

Her lawyer Matthew Blit claims the suit is frivolous and says he’s filed a motion to toss the case.

“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.

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