She was going for cougar, but came out tiger.
A 39-year-old Manhattan high-society hostess is suing because a laser treatment meant to “even out” her skin tone left her with red stripes on her face.
Jennifer Esposito, 39, says she can no longer show her face in polite society after a technician at the New York Dermatology Group last fall botched a cosmetic procedure, according to her lawsuit.
Before her vain attempt at beauty, the Manhattanite had it all: a lavish wedding announced in The Times and held in the Caribbean, a business designing “hip, eclectic interiors,” a posh TriBeCa home, and an Ivy League hubby on the fast track at Goldman Sachs.
But now her lawyer says she is living a nightmare on Hudson Street.
“Jennifer was seriously injured, burned and scarred by a person who was not qualified to perform a medical procedure,” said her attorney, Bernadette Panzella.
“[She] has an extensive schedule of social events weekly which are critical to her own business enterprise, and an important component of her husband’s position at his firm.”
The pretty blonde has permanent burn marks in a strange, splotchy, striped pattern on both sides of her face.
Summers in the Hamptons and holidays in St. Barts also are threatened. She suffered a “permanent loss of pigment to her face as a result of the destruction of pigment-producing cells, and can never again expose her face to the sun,” she claims in her lawsuit.
She says in the suit that she fears being shunned by the ladies who lunch, and her extensive social life, tied to her success as a designer and her husband’s success as a Sachs managing director, has been hampered by the odd-looking burn marks.
Esposito believed the dermatology group’s founder, Dr. David Anthony Colbert, would be performing the laser treatment, but instead was shunted off to an assistant.
“Patients of the dermatology group are very briefly seen by a ‘real’ doctor, who then shuffles them off to another room where they are told that another member of the medical group will be performing their medical procedure,” she says.
“These medical procedures are then performed by an esthetician without the patient’s knowledge or consent.”
When Esposito left the office, she realized her face had been discolored.
She is claiming civil battery in addition to malpractice.
Panzella said her client filed the suit, for an undisclosed amount, to ensure others don’t suffer the same fate.
“Jennifer does not want to see anyone else injured as she was,” she said.
A spokeswoman for the doctor denied any wrongdoing.