A judge Monday said he will order Sofia Vergara’s former fiance — who sued the Beverly Hills reproductive center where the ex-couple had embryos created in anticipation of having a family — to answer further deposition questions from the facility’s attorneys unless the plaintiff agrees to clarify the nature of the damages he is seeking.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Stephen I. Goorvitch said during a hearing Monday that businessman/actor Nick Loeb can avoid sitting for the additional inquiries from lawyers for ART Reproductive Services LLC if he and his lawyer, Vip Bhola, sign an agreement stating that Loeb does not seek damages from the emotional distress of not being able to have a relationship with the unborn children.
Bhola told the judge his client only wants damages stemming from his legal fees and the related past lawsuits between Loeb and Vergara, which Loeb blames on the actions of the reproductive center. But Goorvitch told Bhola that his court papers were unclear on that point and that he understood why the reproductive center brought the motion. In his tentative ruling issued Friday, the judge said he was leaning toward granting the defense motion and directing Loeb to answer the additional questions.
Goorvitch told Bhola that the signed agreement by the attorney and Loeb, if filed, will be final and Loeb will not be able to seek damages regarding his inability to have a relationship with the unborn children.
“You can’t come in later and say you’re seeking this,” Goorvitch said.
Goorvitch initially took under submission the part of his tentative ruling regarding a $2,110 fine he said he was thinking of imposing because Bhola allegedly told Loeb during the first deposition to not answer some defense questions. Later in the day, the judge decided to go forward with the fine against Bhola and Loeb.
“The law is clear that an attorney may not direct a client not to answer a question during the deposition unless it implicates issues such as privilege or trade secret,” the judge wrote.
In the negligence suit filed in June 2020, Loeb says he and Vergara began their relationship in 2010, became engaged in 2012 and subsequently started discussing plans to have a family. They agreed to create embryos at ART through in-vitro fertilization, according to his court papers.
After the first round of IVF, a surrogate mother was unable to produce a child with two embryos, so Loeb and Vergara consulted with ART about a second round of treatments in November 2013 that produced two more embryos, according to Loeb.
However, ART did not provide Loeb and Vergara with the chance to decide what would happen to the embryos if the couple separated or if storage fees went unpaid, a violation of the state Health & Safety Code, according to Loeb.
Vergara failed to pay the storage fees and Loeb ended up paying them, he says.
Loeb and Vergara also were not provided legal counsel or advised to speak to lawyers before signing the forms, according to Loeb.
The ART Center’s attorneys wanted to ask Loeb questions during his deposition about his living children and his relationship with them, but Loeb’s lawyer told him not to answer, according to the judge’s tentative ruling.
“That alone compels the court to grant this motion,” Goorvitch wrote. “The law is clear that an attorney may not direct a client not to answer a question during the deposition unless it implicates issues such as privilege or trade secret.”
Among the questions the facility’s lawyers wanted to ask Loeb were how often he sees his children in person, who is their biological mother, who has legal custody of them, does he have a visitation schedule set with them, what are their genders, and was Loeb present for their birthdays and school performances.
Bhola said all of Loeb’s children are very young. In his court papers, Bhola stated that, given that Loeb has received death threats because of his pro-life beliefs and Vergara’s popularity, “He is not going to subject his living children to that risk.”
In one of the separate legal actions between Vergara and Loeb, the actress, now 49, sued Loeb in February 2016, seeking a court order declaring that any attempts by Loeb, now 46, to bring the embryos to term would be a breach of their original contract. Vergara won that case in February 2021.