Fertility Doctor Asch Ordered to Appear at Deposition

Couples who allege their eggs or embryos were stolen in the UC Irvine fertility clinic scandal may soon have a chance to question, face to face, the once-famed specialist who stands at the center of the allegations. Or maybe not.

A Superior Court judge on Friday ordered that Dr. Ricardo H. Asch appear Jan. 5 at a Newport Beach law office for a deposition in about a dozen lawsuits stemming from the alleged egg-stealing scheme.

But Asch may not answer any questions at all, asserting his constitutional right against self-incrimination, his lawyer said in court Friday. And attorneys for the couples said they’d be surprised if Asch, who has left the country and failed to show up at a previously ordered deposition in late November, makes the date.

“We’ll have to wait and see if he’ll actually show up in Orange County,” said attorney Larry Feldman, who is representing two couples.

At the same time this week, two former clinic employees filed lawsuits contending they were wrongfully fired after they tried to report what was happening at the Center for Reproductive Health.

The suits filed in Orange County Superior Court by Toula Batshoun and Linda Kay Martin seek unspecified damages from UC Irvine, the UC Board of Regents and others.

Batshoun, 34, a former administrative assistant at the fertility clinic, has “found it impossible to get a job,” since she was fired three years ago, her attorney, Crystal Sluyter, said Friday. “My client was the initial whistle-blower, but, of course, never received a penny for what she knew, much less the $900,000 doled out to other whistle-blowers” in severances.

Batshoun’s suit also names Asch and doctors Jose P. Balmaceda and Sergio Stone.

Karen Taillon, Stone’s attorney, said that Batshoun appeared to have been “properly terminated” after a clinic investigation “concerning theft in the office. . . . And even so, my client didn’t terminate her. She wasn’t his employee. She was a university employee.”

Martin, 49, the former principal clerk at the Center for Reproductive Health, alleges in her lawsuit that she routinely handed over envelopes containing large sums of cash to Asch and Stone and was told to record monetary payments from clients as “adjustments,” not income.

After asking her supervisors at the clinic about these practices, Martin was first “admonished that she had no right to question doctors’ procedures,” then labeled a “problem employee” and shifted to several other jobs before she was forced to take a stress leave, according to the lawsuit. The stress leave was later “transformed into a firing,” the lawsuit alleges.

If Asch fails to appear for the deposition as ordered Friday, Feldman said, the couples could seek fines and even a default judgment against Asch, meaning he automatically loses the case and his assets may be seized to compensate the plaintiffs.

The lawsuits against the university and three former fertility specialists allege that eggs and embryos were stolen and that some were implanted in women without the donors’ permission. All three doctors and the university have denied any wrongdoing.

In a hearing Friday before Superior Court Judge Leonard Goldstein, Asch’s attorney argued that his client should not be forced to travel to Orange County for a deposition that could be done by phone, or in a video conference.

Attorney Dave Brown said he has been told Asch is in Mexico City on a one-year teaching and research sabbatical.

But attorneys said they have no evidence Asch is still in Mexico City and that it would be “ludicrous” to force their clients to “chase [Asch] around the world.”

The judge ultimately ordered Asch to appear in Orange County, saying any objections by his attorney should have been raised when the first deposition was set in November.