The Queens doctor imprisoned last week for illegally peddling about a million pills — including powerful prescription narcotics that led to three patient deaths — has now been hit with a lawsuit from a victim’s widow demanding restitution.
Valene Castillo — whose husband Eliot Castillo died from a lethal mixture of oxycodone and alprazolam prescribed by Dr. Lawrence Choy — filed a suit Tuesday in Queens Supreme Court demanding he pay unspecified damages.
“She’s a very young, attractive woman with young children who has had to live and raise the children without the benefit of her husband and the father of her children,” Frank Torres, the Long Island lawyer representing the widow, told The Post on Wednesday.
Choy, 66, was sentenced Sept. 10 to seven years behind bars after pleading guilty to 34 counts of manslaughter, reckless endangerment and the criminal sale of a controlled substance.
Eliot, 35, was discovered dead in 2013 on his mother’s couch from the two-drug cocktail, which Choy had prescribed him in high doses, according to prosecutors.
Valene’s suit accuses Choy of over-prescribing opioids to her husband when the doctor treated him from June 2012 to February 2013.
The doctor failed to tell Eliot about the risks of and alternatives to the treatment that led to his untimely demise, the suit charges, blaming the death on Choy’s “carelessness and negligence.”
In previous court documents, his mother ripped Choy for causing her grandchildren’s “unbearable” pain.
“They still can’t understand how such a selfish act on your part could cause them a lifetime of pain,” Aida Castillo said in a statement that a prosecutor read in court last week. “There has been missed birthdays, proms and milestones they’ve had to and will have to accept because Elliot isn’t here.”
Prosecutors also blamed Choy for the overdose deaths of 30-year-old Michael Ries and 43-year-old Daniel Barry in Suffolk County. The doctor — whose Flushing office took in more than 100 patients a week at the height of his practice — often prescribed lethal combinations of opioids and other addictive drugs, authorities said.
Torres said he was in the courtroom “filled with family members of the victims” when Choy was sentenced last week. The nephrologist could now face more civil lawsuits as the law barred such cases from being filed until his criminal case was wrapped up, Torres noted.
“Once the other family members and other people learn of it, they may very well follow suit and do the same thing,” Torres said.
Choy’s defense lawyer, Jeffrey Lichtman, did not immediately return request for comment.