Asch’s Lawyer Noted for Splashy Tactics

While ‘60s demonstrators at other campuses marched and burned draft cards, then-freshman Lloyd Charton was part of a sneakier protest movement at UC Irvine--mocking the university by getting the school’s mascot named the Anteaters.

“I wasn’t the guy who came up with the name, but I was the zealous advocate,” Charton recalled. “That was our protest.”

Now, three decades later, Charton is again the “zealous advocate” facing down the university--this time as the civil attorney for Dr. Ricardo H. Asch, one of three fertility doctors the school has accused of stealing eggs and embryos from scores of patients at its fertility clinic and implanting them in others.

The splashy case, replete with lawsuits, suggestions of possible criminal wrongdoing and sensational media coverage, has inspired a classic Charton performance.

The 48-year-old Santa Ana lawyer, as famous for his love of the spotlight as for his big-money courtroom victories, on Monday finished shepherding Asch through a minefield of evidence and left other attorneys fuming that Charton had managed to turn the four days of questioning by opposing lawyers into a publicity stunt for the doctor.

At the deposition in a Tijuana hotel, Charton was at the center of a brouhaha over accusations that an opposing attorney stole a stenographer’s notes. He got into shouting matches with the lawyer’s husband and reporters who said she had an alibi.

Then, on the last day of the session, Charton’s office contacted TV crews and reporters from across Southern California for a news conference and then cited their presence as a security threat to Asch. The doctor abruptly left, angering attorneys who had hoped to question him further.

Charton, however, later denied calling the news conference, saying he was merely responding to a barrage of interview requests.

“This was kind of a circus atmosphere,” Larry Eisenberg, a lawyer representing three former patients suing Asch, told television reporters at the session’s end. “It was horrendous.”

It was by no means Charton’s first controversial move in the case.

Last May, Charton created a stir when he claimed that Asch and his two partners were victims of a blackmail plot. The lawyer released a written letter purportedly sent by the blackmailer and signed “Dr. Malcolm X.” The letter has not been raised as an issue in Asch’s defense since.

Charton, who has hosted his own radio show and carries press credentials, has made a living with unexpected moves that throw opponents off balance. He also has won some unpromising cases. Charton once won $400,000 from the state for the widow of a drunk driver who struck a Caltrans light pole. He has represented the down-and-out for nothing and taken on mighty developers on behalf of average homeowners.

Charton represented then-county Recorder Lee A. Branch against sexual-harassment allegations two years ago and defended Donald Hill Williams Jr., a former Orange County developer accused of running a multimillion-dollar scam.

“Unusual cases--if I have a specialty that’s probably what it is,” Charton said Tuesday during a two-hour interview in the offices of Vermes, Charton & Rovenger, the Santa Ana firm he joined as a partner in 1993.

Charton is also unusual among lawyers for taking on both civil and criminal cases. While most of his work centers on defending large insurance companies in routine cases, Charton has shown an affinity for cases in which his clients are scripted as the “underdogs” and he is their media-star protector.

“I love cases where it’s not a slam-dunk,” said Charton, who lives with his wife, Stella, in north Tustin. “I love cases where people seem to be given no chance to win.”

Detractors say Charton is drawn to the glory of the big case but is sometimes put off by the spadework. Charton left a wake of bitter feelings among some fellow attorneys last year when he ended his volunteer work on behalf of homeless people cited by Santa Ana police for violating the city’s anti-camping ordinance.

Charton said he doesn’t blame the other attorneys for grumbling, but he believed his work on the case was done. Prosecutors had offered to drop charges in exchange for a day of community service, Charton said, and the offer was a good one.

“I didn’t leave any client in the lurch,” Charton said. “As far as I was concerned, the deal was done.”

Charton says he is most proud of his four years’ work on behalf of the homeless. He began donating his services after a roundup by Santa Ana police, joining a group of more than 15 lawyers who offered legal work free. A photograph of two of his homeless clients hangs on the wall in Charton’s office, next to a picture of renowned lawyer Melvin Belli.

Charton said he hosted strategy sessions, wrote legal motions and even bought $2,000 worth of sleeping bags to hand out to the homeless camping at Santa Ana’s Civic Center. When the defense team won a statewide award for volunteer work in 1991, Charton rankled some colleagues by lobbying to be one of the three legal-team members to accept the award.

Charton was unapologetic. “Did I lobby to get it? And did I believe I deserved it?” Charton asked. “You bet.”

The approach that can leave opponents red-faced and allies miffed also very often puts smiles on the faces of Charton’s clients.

“He felt very strongly there was justification for my case and made it very clear he would not do so if he didn’t feel that way. . . . He’s the most aggressive, positive individual. He doesn’t compromise,” said Branch, the county’s former recorder.

Branch was condemned by the County Board of Supervisors and later investigated by the Orange County Grand Jury on allegations of sexual harassment against employees. He was never charged with wrongdoing, but was later defeated at the polls, in 1994.

Gary Howard, a Charton client who won a $1-million settlement from a taxi company in 1990 after he was struck and severely injured by a cab, described Charton as “adamant” in pushing for the damages.

“When he believes in something I don’t believe I’ve ever seen another lawyer that vigorously defends that client better than Lloyd,” said law partner L. Robert Vermes. “He’s a brilliant strategist.”

Charton, who began practicing law in 1974 after graduating from Western State University School of Law, represented drug defendants and later won notice for his work suing developers on behalf of homeowners who houses were damaged in landslides. Charton joined the firm in 1993 and brought with him a slew of high-profile cases. Telephones at the once-media shy firm now buzz with calls from reporters.

“He’s changed us considerably,” Vermes said.

Some opponents grudgingly salute Charton’s head-first style.

“I wouldn’t put him as the biggest pain in the butt I’ve ever run up against. He’s a better-than-average pain in the butt,” said Alexander M. Dai, an attorney who represented Caltrans in the lawsuit filed by the widow of the drunken driver in 1987. In that case, the state agreed to pay $400,000 to the driver’s widow, Cindy Ann Williams, after Charton argued that Caltrans had left road conditions unsafe.

Charton’s combative style is nothing new. As a grand juror in 1972, Charton, then a law student, stepped aside from hearing criminal cases after a judge scolded him, contending that Charton argued with prosecutors about evidence, cross-examined witnesses improperly and held up prosecutors to scorn. Charton also was deemed to have a conflict of interest because he was working as a law clerk for a lawyer handling criminal cases.

Current critics also accuse Charton of going overboard.

Nowhere was his aggressiveness more obvious than last weekend during Asch’s deposition in Tijuana.

Several patients’ attorneys said Charton warned them the day before Asch was to appear that if they tried to serve his client with legal papers, they would be evicted from the hotel.

“He says, ‘I’m just letting you know . . . [Asch is] being protected by five security guards and they’ve all got guns. If anybody tries to approach him, they’ll throw your luggage in the street and you’ll end up in a Tijuana jail,’ ” said Melanie Blum, the attorney who has filed the most cases against Asch and the university.

Blum said she was stunned by the comments, because Charton had been solicitous until that point, even offering to set up a pre-deposition meeting between her and Asch.

“I’m looking at him, like, where is this coming from? Is this the same person?”

Charton conceded he “advised” other attorneys they had better not physically approach his client--or jostle the doctor’s wife. But he said any reference to “guns” was a product of overactive imaginations.

What annoyed many of the approximately 20 attorneys who attended the doctor’s deposition at the Grand Hotel was Charton’s seemingly running the show.

It was his stern assistant who issued “security clearances” to attorneys, allowing them to enter the deposition chambers. It was his team that decided where the proceedings would be held and how long they would last. And at the end of each day, it was Charton who presided over press briefings in a reserved room--from which he sometimes excluded opposing attorneys.

“He tried to manipulate the entire situation by having it in this venue with all these guards for a stage performance by Dr. Asch,” Blum said.

Several attorneys in attendance blamed Charton for a bizarre sequence of events that interrupted the proceedings and heightened acrimony among participants. After a mysterious caller phoned in a bomb threat to the hotel in broken English, causing the deposition room to be evacuated, someone stole the stenographer’s notes.

Although the notes later were found stashed behind a seat in the hotel lounge, Charton and his staff created a ruckus by parading alleged witnesses into the deposition room and ultimately announcing that the witnesses had identified Blum as the culprit.

That’s when things really got tense. The proceedings were delayed. Blum later threatened to sue Charton for slander, and Blum’s husband demanded to know why Charton appeared to be guiding the hotel investigation. Charton exchanged angry words with members of the media, some of whom had been with Blum at a taco stand at the time the notes allegedly were stolen.

Charton deliberately “created an atmosphere of intimidation and tension . . . to attempt to throw the plaintiffs’ lawyers off the track,” said attorney Eisenberg.

Charton countered that the theft was “blown out of proportion” by a number of people, even including himself, but termed the deposition overall “very productive.”

Asch did get his message out, portraying himself as a victim of errors by university employees. The doctor agreed that he should have supervised his staff more closely but never admitted intentional wrongdoing--a crucial point because the university does not have to pay for the defense of a physician who engages in deliberate misconduct.

Though some patients’ attorneys said Charton’s tactics backfired, other lawyers said Charton got just what he wanted--a chance to shore up the doctor’s international reputation and pressure the university to pay Asch’s legal tab.

On Tuesday, Charton acknowledged that his tactics rub opponents--and some colleagues--the wrong way. But he showed no signs of regret.

“My clients are looking for a zealous advocate. When someone hires me to defend them, they believe in their position strongly. And they want a lawyer who believes in them.”