UC Agrees to Pay for Balmaceda’s Defense

The University of California has agreed to pay the defense costs of Dr. Jose P. Balmaceda in the first lawsuit to be served against the doctor in the UC Irvine fertility scandal, Balmaceda’s attorney said Monday.

In another development, the attorney, Daniel J. Callahan, said Balmaceda is confident that no unapproved human egg transfers occurred at the Laguna Hills clinic he directed. The attorney’s remarks came in response to the university’s announcement Friday that one illicit transfer apparently occurred at the Saddleback Center for Reproductive Health in 1992, bringing a fourth medical institution into the fertility scandal.

Balmaceda, UCI clinic director Dr. Ricardo H. Asch and Dr. Sergio Stone have been accused by the university of stealing the eggs and embryos of scores of women and implanting them in others at three Orange County clinics and one at UC San Diego. They deny any deliberate wrongdoing.

The university initially refused to pay the legal fees for any of the three doctors sued in the scandal, arguing the trio acted outside the scope of their employment. But the university has been forced to pull back from that position in recent weeks, as an Orange County Superior Court judge ordered the UC regents to pay for Stone’s defense in one leading case.

Callahan argued in court papers last week that the university owed his client a defense in the case of another patient, Sherry Mirkis, who was the first to serve a lawsuit against him. He said Balmaceda never treated Mirkis, who was seen at a UC San Diego clinic where Asch practiced. On Monday, the university notified Callahan that it had switched its position in the Mirkis case, the lawyer said.

Balmaceda and his partners are named as defendants in about 50 lawsuits, although Balmaceda, who is living in Chile, has been served only with the Mirkis case. Callahan has said he will try to get the university to pay legal fees in the remaining cases as well.

University of California attorney John Lundberg could not be reached for comment Monday.

Callahan said that the fact that Saddleback officials uncovered only one possibly improper transfer during its review of patient records “speaks volumes” about his client’s alleged culpability in the scandal.

“Dr. Balmaceda is confident that any investigation of this potential incident will reveal that no unconsented transfers took place,” Callahan said in a news release.