Judge Allows UC Irvine to Keep Fertility Patient Hot Line : Health: Embattled doctors accuse university of harassing them and trying to destroy their careers. The physicians are under investigation for alleged irregularities at the clinic.

Two of the three doctors accused of transplanting human eggs without patient permission were dealt another blow Friday when a judge rejected their attempt to disconnect UC Irvine’s patient hot line about the scandal plaguing its world-renowned fertility clinic.

But the doctors fired back at the university Friday with allegations of their own, contending in court papers that officials trespassed at their clinic, lied about their employment status, harassed them and tried to destroy their careers.

Attorneys for Drs. Jose Balmaceda and Sergio Stone argued that the hot line would compromise their doctor-patient relationships and enable the university to destroy their medical practice by steering patients to other physicians.

But after an hourlong hearing, Orange County Superior Court Judge Robert J. Polis agreed with university officials that the hot line could help answer patient questions about the growing controversy over the Center for Reproductive Health and tentatively denied the doctors’ request. He set another hearing in two months to review the issue if necessary.

“The university is motivated by the need to meet the needs of the patients,” said Thomas A. Ryan, an attorney representing the regents of the University of California. “It believes it is doing that.”

The center is run under a management agreement with the university, which pays for staffing and provides the building. Balmaceda and Stone have been placed on leave from the UC Irvine faculty and UCI Medical Center staff.

Meanwhile, a marriage and family counselor who works with infertile couples said she had received frantic calls from some former patients of the Center for Reproductive Health and its director, Dr. Ricardo Asch.

“They are worried regarding the biological origin of their children,” said counselor Ellen Winters Miller. “There are people who are worried about their embryos that are still at the clinic and [they] wonder how they can access them and move them to another physician.”

The UC regents stepped up an assault on the three doctors Thursday by amending a lawsuit filed last week to add scathing allegations that they transplanted human eggs without patient consent, conducted human subject research without permission and prescribed a fertility drug not approved by the government. The lawsuit also included charges that the team hid cash payments from administrators at UC Irvine.

On Friday, Balmaceda asked the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology to review the informed consent and embryo accounting procedures of the Saddleback Center for Reproductive Health, of which he is director, in the wake of what he called “irresponsible, unproven allegations.”

“Our informed consent and embryo accounting procedures at the Saddleback Center are sound,” he added.

In legal papers filed Friday, Stone’s attorney, Karen Taillon, argued that the UC regents have been “increasingly intrusive, disruptive and violative of the physicians’ . . . right to peacefully and competently operate their individual medical practices” since January.

She contended that on April 27 UC Irvine police “seized, confiscated and removed private patient medical records, files and charts belonging to [the clinic] and the physicians,” refusing to return the records for a week.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Charles Middleton said an investigator spent Friday conducting interviews as part of a criminal probe that also involves the UC Irvine police and the Medical Board of California. He said blackmail letters turned over by Asch and one of the other doctors are under review.

An IRS spokeswoman declined to comment on whether federal investigators would review the UC Irvine suit’s allegations of financial fraud.

Attorneys for the three doctors said their clients spent the day after the lawsuit made national news secluded with their families for the holiday weekend.

In response to the university’s amended lawsuit, Asch’s lawyer, Lloyd Charton, blasted administrators for focusing only on the three doctors, saying several other people--including university employees--handled patient records and harvested eggs at the clinic.

Times staff writer Lily Dizon contributed to this story.