UCI Trying to Get Blood Out of Stone

One day last summer while sitting in an Orange County courtroom, I did a double-take at the spectator in the row behind me.

Who was that man? It took a few minutes to connect face and name to Sergio Stone, the once-celebrated UC Irvine fertility doctor who had fallen from grace following the 1995 scandal involving the theft of eggs and embryos at the clinic he helped establish.

Stone wasn’t linked to the thefts but got caught up in a swirl of subsequent allegations over wrongful billing procedures and violating other university policies. A federal jury convicted him of mail fraud. As Stone sat there last summer, the university had yet to decide whether to strip him of tenure.

It seemed odd to me that Stone--once the toast of the town in his medical circles--was interested in the robbery case that had drawn me to court that day. But he told me later he was concerned that the teenager convicted of the robberies might be innocent.

And then it all made sense.

Since 1994, Stone’s once-great wealth and status had dissipated, leaving him feeling as powerless as the teenager in the dock.

Prophesying Own Misfortune

I’d interviewed Stone at length almost exactly a year earlier--in July of 1998. We talked for 90 minutes or so and he passionately laid out his defense: that he was a scapegoat for his clinic partner’s misdeeds.

He predicted that day in 1998 that a UCI peer review committee wouldn’t vote to fire him, but that the university administration would.

He proved to be the prophet.

Last week, the Board of Regents disregarded a UCI faculty committee’s recommendation that Stone be demoted, not fired. Instead, the board followed the recommendation of UCI Chancellor Ralph Cicerone, marking only the fourth time since the 1950s that a tenured UC professor has been dismissed.

In a letter to UC President Richard Atkinson, Cicerone said Stone’s actions represented “a pattern of deception, dishonesty and callous disregard for the rules that guide our behavior.”

If every faculty member behaved as Stone did, Cicerone wrote, the university “would not be able to fulfill our missions of teaching, research and service.”

One question: If Stone’s actions are so egregious, why have they not been manifestly obvious to at least three other arbiters who have reviewed them?

First, the federal judge who presided over Stone’s trial on the billing violations. A jury convicted him, and the federal prosecutor wanted prison time. The judge who also heard the evidence gave Stone a year’s home detention.

Then came the administrative law judge who advised the California Medical Society on whether Stone should lose his medical license. He reviewed the allegations, took testimony from other doctors and recommended that Stone be put on probation but not lose his license.

Then, UCI’s Committee on Privilege and Tenure weighed in. In its formal report, the committee said it went into its hearing fully expecting to recommend dismissal.

In the end, it didn’t absolve Stone but said his mistakes didn’t warrant his firing. “Although the case against Professor Stone appeared formidable at the outset, we were surprised to find that it partially unraveled under close scrutiny,” the committee reported.

Lots of people have arrived at that conclusion, yet Stone is now out of work.

He’s been on a collision course with the university since 1994. He’s a proud, proud man who hasn’t hidden his disdain for the university hierarchy that he believes has sabotaged his future.

I’ve supported Stone before and will do so again.

But now, he may be snookered.

At a medical school that has generated a lot of negative publicity in recent years, Cicerone may have been unable to resist making an example out of Stone.

And ironically, the faculty committee’s findings gave Cicerone just enough cover to justify it.

That’s the purgatory in which Stone now resides--impartial arbiters consistently cut him slack but still he can’t escape the clutches of confinement.

He may be outraged over that, but he’s not surprised.

In July 1998, I had asked him if the university might still step in and spare him. “They could, but they’re not going to do it,” he said. “They must have convinced themselves it’s true, regardless of the evidence.”

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by e-mail to dana.parsons@latimes.com.