A new class action lawsuit has asked a Cook County court to order a payout from the estate of a doctor who committed suicide after admitting he had misled parents into believing their children had received vaccinations, when they had not.
On June 22, attorney Jim Rollins, of the firm of Wais Vogelstein Forman & Offutt LLC, of Chicago, filed the class action in Cook County Circuit Court against the estate of pediatrician Van Koinis.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of named plaintiff Jessica Czarnecki. The complaint asks the court to expand the action to include perhaps all of Koinis’ former patients.
The class action marks the first civil suit taken against Koinis’ estate since he committed suicide last October in a Cook County Forest Preserve.
According to the complaint and published reports, Koinis practiced medicine from 1991-2019. His office was in suburban Evergreen Park.
However, in a suicide note he left behind, Koinis admitted to falsifying medical records and giving fake vaccinations to his patients.
According to the complaint, parents of Koinis’ patients were informed by the Cook County Sheriff’s Office in March of the contents of Koinis’ suicide note, and “that their children may not have immunity to some or all diseases for which they believed they were vaccinated.”
The complaint asserts this has left children and adults vulnerable to "deadly disease."
According to the complaint, children patients, including Czarnecki’s daughter, were injected with a substance while in Koinis’ office. However, the injections were not the vaccines they were led to believe their children were receiving, the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit does not estimate the number of people believed to have been misled by Koinis. However, the complaint said it is believed the class of additional plaintiffs could number in the “thousands … because Defendant (Koinis) practiced medicine for over 30 years.”
The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages, including actual and punitive damages, plus attorney fees.