Dr. Joel Batzofin founded the Huntington Reproductive Center in Pasadena in 1988 and turned it into the biggest fertility practice in the West.
By undercutting competitors' prices, he drew patients from around the world to his Southern California clinics. By 2001, Batzofin and the five partners he brought in shared a yearly profit of more than $5 million.
But in a drama vaguely reminiscent of Julius Caesar's, his partners took a secret vote the next year, ousting him from his own empire.
The result was an explosion of litigation. Batzofin filed an arbitration claim against his former partners. They sued Batzofin and his new partner. Then his new partner sued his old partners and their lawyer.
Along the way, private detectives posed as fertility patients. In search of damning evidence, at least one female gumshoe submitted to an ultrasound of her uterus and ovaries. A doctor submitted his own sperm sample to his crosstown rival, pretending it was the aspiring father's.
The legal brawl went on for six years, revolving largely around whether Batzofin was abiding by a settlement agreement not to compete with his former colleagues when he opened a new practice.
The clash among fertility titans underscores just how intense the competition has become in the multibillion-dollar business of baby-making. Because fertility treatments usually are not covered by insurance, clinics vie for customers with advertising, discounts, websites or supposedly special techniques, much as plastic surgeons do.
"The way somebody in this field becomes wealthy is to corner the market," said Kirk O. Hanson, an ethicist at Santa Clara University who studies the business aspects of medicine.
Southern California has one of the highest densities of fertility clinics in the world, with more than three dozen clinics competing for patients.
"It's a cutthroat business," said Batzofin, 56. "There is a lot of greed."
Batzofin got into the business early, starting Huntington 10 years after the first test-tube baby was born. In vitro fertilization then was a revolution for infertile couples.
As business grew, Batzofin brought in new partners and gave them full voting rights. But, as he tells it, the group soon was riven by the drive for money.
"Doctors were starting to compete with each other for the next patient that walks through the door," he said.
