Seventh Couple Acts Against UCI Clinic : Fertility: A Costa Mesa husband and wife file a notice of intent to sue, alleging eggs and embryos were misappropriated.

A seventh couple took legal action against UC Irvine and its once-prestigious Center for Reproductive Health on Friday, vowing to sue over what they allege are the misappropriation of human eggs and embryos that may have led to the birth of children unknown to them.

Stacy Swanson-Schofro, 35, and her husband, Steve A. Schofro, 38, of Costa Mesa filed a notice of intent to sue UCI, the UCI Medical Center and Drs. Ricardo H. Asch, Jose P. Balmaceda and Sergio Stone, who once operated the now-defunct fertility clinic.

The couple’s action is the seventh legal claim filed against the university and its team of internationally esteemed fertility specialists. One lawsuit has been filed by a former patient, and the doctors are the target of seven separate investigations.

Asch, Stone and Balmaceda have each consistently denied knowingly committing a wrong.

Ronald G. Brower, Asch’s attorney, could not be reached for comment, but Patrick K. Moore, the attorney for Balmaceda, denied any misconduct.

“I don’t think that any of the accusations regarding any clinical misconduct on the part of Dr. Balmaceda have any merit,” Moore said, “and there’s no evidence to indicate that Dr. Balmaceda had engaged in any kind of wrongdoing in his clinical practice. We find all of these claims to be utterly without merit.”

Swanson-Schofro and her husband say that in January, 1992, they sought fertility counseling and treatments from Asch and his colleagues at a UCI medical facility in Orange and at the Saddleback Memorial Medical Center in Laguna Hills.

“Numerous of Stacy Schofro’s fertilized and non-fertilized eggs and embryos were extracted from [her] and thereafter stored” at the Center for Reproductive Health, the complaint reads.

UCI and the doctors “intentionally or negligently . . . sold, donated, converted, misappropriated or destroyed” the couple’s eggs, the complaint reads, or “otherwise used them for impregnating” other patients, without the consent of donor or recipient.

Walter G. Koontz Jr., the couple’s Newport Beach attorney, who also represents another couple in a similar action, said Swanson-Schofro’s eggs were intended to be implanted in a surrogate mother shortly after they were taken from her in 1992, but that Asch reneged on the procedure.

For reasons the attorney says remain unclear, Asch also allegedly balked at using a second surrogate to carry the couple’s fertilized eggs, despite “thousands of dollars in expenses” incurred by the couple and hours of psychological counseling by both Swanson-Schofro and her would-be surrogates.

“They were never able to get the procedure completed, and they’re very frustrated and unhappy about that,” Koontz said, adding that the couple intends to present “credible evidence” that Asch stole the eggs and implanted them in other women without the consent of the donor or recipient.