A Manhattan dentist who moonlights as an opera singer can’t stand her patients booing her online about her work, a lawsuit charges.
Dr. Stacy Makhnevich, who bills herself as “the Classical Singer Dentist of New York,” is being accused in a Manhattan Federal Court lawsuit of trying to muzzle her patients’ criticism — even before it’s made.
Former patient Robert Lee claims Makhnevich forced him to sign an agreement not to bash her online before she worked on his sore tooth, according to the suit, filed Tuesday.
Lee claims the crooning tooth doctor then hit a sour note when he accused her on the website Yelp of overbilling him by $4,000.
“Avoid at all cost!” his Yelp posting read. “Scamming their customers!”
He said Makhnevich accused him of breaching the “Mutual Agreement to Maintain Privacy” that he signed.
Lee, who has since moved to Maryland, said the dentist began billing him $100 a day for every day his negative Yelp posting remained online.
“I have to wonder what this dentist’s other patients have said to make her feel it was necessary to go to this extreme,” Lee said Wednesday.
Makhnevich — who just released a CD of arias titled “European Opera” — did not return calls left Wednesday at her offices on the 69th floor of the Chrysler Building.
Lee’s lawyer, Paul Levy of the consumer protection group Public Citizen, said the agreement that Makhnevich makes her patients sign violates their constitutional right to free speech and breaches dental ethics.
“This is using these contracts to suppress the other side and deprives the consumer of valuable information,” Levy told the Daily News.
Levy noted that positive, five-star reviews of Makhnevich’s work are posted on Yelp.
He said the form Lee signed, while he was in pain and badly in need of treatment, is provided to about 2,000 doctors throughout the country by a North Carolina company called Medical Justice.
Calls placed to Medical Justice were not returned. But an official with the company told the tech website Arstechnica.com that in light of the lawsuit, it is retiring the forms and informing its clients to stop using them.
With Edgar Sandoval
