Eye Doctor Countersues to Regain License : Law: Attorneys for Jeffrey Rutgard, who is being investigated on a laundry list of charges, blame competitors for ‘witch hunt.’

In a highly unusual action, a La Jolla eye doctor and a group of his patients have sued the state attorney general’s office, as well as witnesses, hoping to reinstate the physician’s suspended medical license.

The case against Dr. Jeffrey Rutgard--accused of performing unnecessary eye surgeries and bilking Medicare--is based on his disgruntled employees, unhappy competitors and a biased investigation by the state, his attorneys say.

“The attorney general’s office and competitors in San Diego have a vested interest in getting rid of the best surgeon down there,” said Mitchell J. Stein, Rutgard’s Los Angeles-based attorney. “Dr. Rutgard’s track record is second to none. . . . This is a witch hunt.”

Rutgard’s license was suspended last spring while state and federal authorities investigated his medical practice for a laundry list of allegations, including falsifying medical records and reusing disposable medical equipment. Rutgard is seeking a total of $80 million for lost profits, emotional distress, damage to his reputation and to his practice, according to court records.

But the attorney general’s office Thursday countered Rutgard’s charges and said they are unfounded.

“There’s no merit to the allegations,” said Al Korobkin, an assistant attorney general. “It’s a very unusual lawsuit.”

In the attorney general’s motion filed Thursday to dismiss Rutgard’s charges, the agency said, “The allegations are nothing more than an effort to intimidate those who have brought Rutgard’s fraudulent empire to it knees.”

Rutgard’s lawsuit has targeted the very people who have put him in his current predicament, according to the attorney general’s memorandum of points, filed in U.S. District Court. He is suing “the whistle-blowers, former employees who saw firsthand Rutgard’s misconduct; the expert-witness physicians whose expert opinions were presented; the public officials and bodies who are prosecuting this action.”

Indeed, the state has painted a dark picture of Rutgard as a greedy physician who sent employees to nursing homes and senior centers in hopes of recruiting patients. Then, having lured the elderly patients to his Hillcrest and La Jolla offices, he would perform operations that were not always necessary, the attorney general has alleged.

But Stein--one of Rutgard’s three lawyers--gives a very different account of a man whose devotion to his family and his patients has alienated his colleagues.

“You can’t compete against this man--he’s too good,” Stein said. “He won’t go out and make friends and schmooze; he’s a doctor’s doctor. He cares about his patients and he goes home and spends time with his family. That’s Jeffrey Rutgard.”

Rutgard, 41, was unavailable to comment.

The state’s investigators “harassed and intimidated employees and patients” of Rutgard, causing the cancellation of appointments for “medically necessary surgery” and “jeopardizing their health, safety and welfare,” according to Rutgard’s lawsuit.

The attorney general’s office also waged a media campaign that intentionally blackened Rutgard’s image, Stein said.

As part of the campaign to damage Rutgard in the eyes of the public, Stein pointed to the release of an excerpt from a creative writing essay contained in a journal, in which Rutgard wrote, “I have a gift from the Lord, he’s given me the ability to work and earn millions of dollars, billions to be accurate.”

In court papers filed by the attorney general’s office, they initially refer to the passage as a journal entry--not a creative writing assignment, Stein said. Taken out of context, the excerpt makes it seem that “Dr. Rutgard is obsessed with money, power and God . . . and that is a lie.”

“The truth is that Dr. Rutgard does not think he can part the waters,” said Stein, who is joined on Rutgard’s legal team by lawyers Rene Sotorrio of Florida and Richard (Racehorse) Haynes of Texas.

“The attorney general has managed to malign every fiber of decency in Dr. Rutgard’s make-up,” the doctor’s lawsuit says.

The action of the administrative law judge last spring in suspending Rutgard’s license has “jeopardized the public health, safety and welfare and denied to the public Dr. Rutgard’s uniquely skilled and affordable medical care--otherwise unparalleled in the San Diego community of ophthalmological surgeons.”

Because of the actions of his competitors, Rutgard is also suing more than 10 doctors who cooperated with the state, Stein said. In fact, the court records refer to a “conspiracy of ophthalmological surgeons who comprised the original actors responsible for the active exclusion of Dr. Rutgard from the ophthalmological marketplace, and who have caused irrevocable harm to Dr. Rutgard’s reputation.”

Several patients joined Rutgard in the lawsuit, alleging they required his care and would suffer “irreparable harm” without his medical abilities.

These patients, according to the court records, “are unable to find . . . medical care comparable to that of Dr. Rutgard’s and further, they are in need of Dr. Rutgard’s care for their health, safety and welfare.”