Woman Drops Suit Against SF Valley Doctor Over Alleged Unwanted Kiss

SAN FERNANDO VALLEY -- A former employee for an Encino medical firm that specializes in plastic surgery has dropped her lawsuit alleging a doctor for the corporation kissed her without permission during a 2020 restaurant visit.

Plaintiff Jasmine Torres' Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit also named Dr. Maxim Benbassat as a defendant. She dropped him from the case on July 25 and did the same on Tuesday with the portion of the complaint against Encino Surgical Institute, which does business under the name of Beverly Hills Physicians.

Both requests filed with Judge Michael L. Stern were made ``with prejudice,'' meaning the litigation cannot be refiled. The court papers do not state whether settlements were reached or if Torres is not pursuing the case for other reasons.

Torres was hired in March 2019 as a surgical technician and spent most of her time at the Encino office while working part of the time at the Thousand Oaks facility, according to the suit, which additionally stated she took one to two months of medical leave during the summer of 2019 to deal with unrelated mental health issues.

Benbassat, an anesthesiologist, began working at BHP in the spring of2020 and occasionally took some of the surgical technicians and nurses with him out to eat, such as he did in August 2020 with Torres and a nurse at an Encino restaurant, the suit stated.

After Benbassat paid the bill, he ``grabbed plaintiff on her arms near her shoulders, pulled her towards him and kissed plaintiff on the lips,'' the suit filed last Sept. 9 alleged.

Torres told her supervisor what happened and her boss thanked her for the information, according to the suit.

Several days later, Torres confided in a co-worker what Benbassat had allegedly done, the suit stated. A day after that, the plaintiff's supervisor told her that ``other people were feeling uncomfortable about the story'' and asked if the plaintiff ``could just not talk about it anymore,'' the suit stated.
Torres agreed not to mention the incident further, the suit stated.

Despite the alleged forced kiss, Torres was required to work with Benbassat three to four times per week and the physician tried to flirt with her, gave her hugs and made her feel ``terribly uncomfortable and anxious,'' the suit stated.

Disheartened, anxiety-ridden, and depressed, Torres believed BHP was not going to take any action to address her complaint about Benbassat and resigned in August 2020, the suit stated.

The plaintiff's lawsuit allegations included assault, battery, wrongful termination, discrimination, retaliation and both intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress. She sought unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.

-- City News Service