State High Court Blocks Suit Charging Trickery in Promise to Sire Child

The state Supreme Court has rejected a bid by a former Harvard professor to sue UC San Diego Chancellor Richard C. Atkinson for allegedly tricking her into an abortion with a fraudulent promise to father another child.

The justices, in a brief order issued late Thursday, refused to hear an appeal by Lee Perry of a state appellate court decision in September barring her from suing for deceitful failure to impregnate.

The action appeared to bring state court proceedings to a close in a heated legal battle over Perry’s claims that Atkinson persuaded her to abort a 1977 pregnancy by promising to father another child within a year--even by artificial insemination if they were no longer together.

Perry, then a professor of education and psychology at Harvard, has left that institution and is living in Boston. Atkinson, at that time a director of the National Science Foundation and separated from his wife, took over at UCSD in July, 1980.

In February, 1986, shortly after the case came to trial, Atkinson agreed to pay Perry $250,000 to settle her claims that the chancellor caused her emotional distress by threatening to destroy her academic reputation and encouraging her to kill herself.

Provided for Appeal

The out-of-court settlement permitted Perry to appeal a trial court ruling barring her from pursuing a separate claim of fraud and deceit against Atkinson for his alleged failure to impregnate her.

Atkinson said then that the settlement was not an admission of liability but that he and his wife wanted to bring the matter to a close and avoid the expense and uncertainty of further legal proceedings.

Perry said Friday she would take the case next to the U.S. Supreme Court, saying it would be “an unjust decision” not to do so.

“It’s really not OK to lie to pregnant women to trick them out of their right to choice,” she said. “The kind of representations we make in our personal relationships should be as honest as those we make in other relationships--particularly . . . if it could affect somebody’s physical well-being.”

Atkinson declined comment Friday and his attorney could not be reached.

Panel’s Reasoning Told

In the Sept. 25 decision, a state Court of Appeal panel in San Diego held that judges should not attempt to rule on “promises and representations” made by consenting adults over their sexual relationships.

“Although Atkinson may have deliberately misrepresented his intentions to Perry in order to persuade her to have an abortion, their procreative decisions were so intensely private that we decline to intervene,” Superior Court Judge Richard D. Huffman, sitting temporarily by special appointment, wrote for the court.

In a subsequent appeal to the state Supreme Court, Perry, serving as her own co-counsel, and her lawyer, Suuzen Ty Anderson of Spring Valley, contended that the law should permit fraud suits in such circumstances as a way to “protect maternal health” and the “rights of women to choose to have and bear their children.”

The appeal court ruling, they said, would “encourage fraud and deception” against pregnant women.

Atkinson, in a brief opposing review of the appellate ruling, argued that allowing such suits would open the legal floodgates to a stream of legal actions from “disgruntled former lovers.”