In the latest twist in the wild battle over Sofía Vergara and Nick Loeb’s frozen embryos, Page Six has learned that lawyers are gearing up to file a lawsuit demanding that the embryos be shipped from California to Louisiana.
Earlier this month a stunning suit was filed against Vergara on behalf of the fertilized eggs — which are named in the papers as “Emma” and “Isabella” and listed as plaintiffs. The embryos’ “trustee,” James Charbonnet, was also listed as a plaintiff.
But insiders tell us that in the new year, attorneys will ask the ART Reproductive Center in Beverly Hills, Calif. — where the embryos have been cryogenically frozen since the former couple’s IVF treatment was completed in 2013 — to transfer them to a facility in Louisiana.
The legal team is hopeful that ART will agree because it will consider the embryos a “legal hot potato” that it would like to be rid of. But if ART — or Vergara — declines permission for the embryos to be moved, Charbonnet intends to sue in federal court for the right to move the embryos.
Insiders say that the choice of Louisiana as their new home is significant because it’s the only state where embryos have legal rights of their own, rather than being considered the belongings, or “chattels,” of their parents.
The embryos would be sent by courier.
“Although Nick Loeb is not a party to the existing litigation or [this] subsequently contemplated litigation, he may be a beneficiary if the court adjudicates that the embryos are not chattels but entities with constitutional rights of survival,” Loeb’s attorney Mark J. Heller told us. “Such a ruling would defeat [Vergara’s] intention to keep her daughters’ embryos frozen in perpetuity and endorse the irrevocable right of parenthood granted to donors when they contribute to the creation of an embryo.”
Loeb already sued for custody of “Emma” and “Isabella” in 2014 but dropped the suit this month after a California judge demanded Loeb identify women with whom he’d had aborted pregnancies. Loeb said he would rather “go to jail” than give up the names. Vergara’s rep didn’t get back to us.
