Regents to Sue Former UC Irvine Fertility Clinic Doctors

Attempting to recoup millions of dollars spent on legal settlements, the UC Board of Regents voted Friday to sue the doctors who ran the scandal-ridden fertility clinic at UC Irvine.

The regents want Ricardo H. Asch, Jose P. Balmaceda and Sergio Stone to reimburse them for more than $19 million the university has agreed to pay infertile couples who sought help at the now-defunct Center for Reproductive Health.

The couples filed lawsuits after officials acknowledged that UC Irvine physicians lost or stole eggs and embryos in a medical ethics scandal that enveloped the center in 1995.

“It is abundantly clear that the heinous actions these doctors took against their patients were completely outside the scope of their university positions,” said James Holst, UC general counsel, in a prepared statement.

Asch and Balmaceda fled the country in 1995--Asch to Mexico, Balmaceda to Chile. Federal prosecutors are trying to extradite both to stand trial on numerous charges, including mail fraud and tax evasion counts.

Asch’s attorney, Josefina Walker, said Asch will look forward to having his day in court. She said a trial would allow him to expose how the university paid too much to settle the lawsuits in an attempt to “sweep the entire thing under the carpet.”

“The people of California will get to decide whether their money was well spent on paying off all these people,” she said.

Stone’s attorney, Karen Taillon, said the regents “are buying a major lawsuit. My client has been completely exonerated on those allegations [of federal tax evasion and conspiracy], and it is clearly an intentional act designed to further damage and injure his reputation.”

Stone was convicted in 1997 of fraudulently billing insurance companies.

Balmaceda’s attorney could not be reached for comment.

The action comes as the university is trying to settle the last seven actions among the 113 lawsuits filed by former patients.

The suits accuse the doctors of harvesting women’s eggs and then giving them to other women at fertility clinics in Orange and San Diego counties from 1986 to 1995.

In some cases, eggs or embryos were secretly given to other patients or used for research. Some couples bore children conceived from the eggs of other women without the genetic parents’ knowledge.

Walter Koontz, an attorney representing some of the couples who have yet to settle their claims, said the regents’ action is a publicity ploy. Koontz said the regents are trying to distance themselves from their former employees before a January trial, when jurors may decide who is chiefly to blame for the scandal. The regents, Balmaceda and Asch all are defendants in the lawsuit.

The fact that Balmaceda and Asch have refused to return to this country to face criminal charges leads some to speculate that the UC system may never recoup any funds.

“It’s going to be pretty tough. A judge could rule in their favor, but to actually get the money is the hard part,” said Alison Dundes Renteln, a USC law professor.