Lawsuit frequency and claims basis over lost, damaged, and destroyed frozen embryos over a 10-year period

Abstract

Objective: To review the claims, claims basis, and frequency of lawsuits over lost or damaged frozen embryos and to estimate their frequency over a 10-year interval. Design: Retrospective analysis of case law. Setting: Private in vitro fertilization clinic and school of law. Patient(s): None. Intervention(s): Case law identified using Bloomberg Law, Westlaw, and Lexis Nexis databases for coverage of court dockets regarding allegations and claims. Main Outcome Measure(s): Lawsuits brought and settled in state and federal court, with data extracted included claims basis and location in federal or state courts. Result(s): We reviewed case law from January 1, 2009, to April 22, 2019, using the terms frozen, discarded, lost, and damaged embryo/ s, and calculated clinical cases using frozen embryos from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. We identified 133 cases: 122 and 11 lawsuits in the state and federal court dockets, respectively. Of these, 87 cases involved alleged freezer tank failure in California and Ohio in 2018-2019. In the remaining 44 cases, the majority (37 cases) were brought for personal injury, breach of contract or warranty, product liability, professional negligence, unfair business practices, and miscellaneous tort. A minority (7 cases) were brought for medical malpractice. During this interval, a total of 398,256 embryo-thaw procedures were reported nationally. Conclusion(s): Allegations range from business practices to product liability and are seldom for medical malpractice. Our results suggest that best practices in storage of frozen embryos should include not only improvements in hardware and monitoring of storage conditions of specimens but also setting standards for communications among patients, providers, and embryology laboratories regarding disposition of embryos. (Fertil Steril Rep Ò 2020;1:78-82. Ó2020 by American Society for Reproductive Medicine.

Lawmakers rushed to protect IVF in Alabama—Why wasn’t abortion afforded the same urgency?

“…(The bills from both Alabama’s house of representatives and senate do not allow clinics to be sued for wrongful acts. )151617 This preclusion of any form of liability exceptionalises IVF treatment, given that healthcare professionals can be liable for medical malpractice in other areas of medicine.…”

Storage, transport, and disposition of gametes and embryos: legal issues and practical considerations

“…Questions about ''status'' and ''value'' and ''rights'' are complex considerations when dealing with these issues (12,13). Whereas the status of eggs and sperm appears to be somewhat less controversial, issues of value and ownership or control are often raised in instances where losses of irreplaceable gametes occur (14) or the gamete contributor dies (15). Debates over the status, value, and rights of embryos are even more passionately espoused as healthcare providers, ethicists, lawyers, and patients struggle with how to handle human reproductive material or decide who has ownership or control over it (16).…”

Long-term preservation of germ cells and gonadal tissues at ambient temperatures

“…Unfortunately, facilities with sustained supply of electrical power and liquid nitrogen are expensive and not always affordable or readily available in some regions of the world. In addition to possible issues of cross-contaminations in liquid nitrogen (Bajerski et al 2021), cryo-storage systems are prone to failures -from equipment breakdown to human error -which, recently, has led to dramatic sample losses in human fertility clinics and research laboratories (Pomeroy et al 2019, Letterie & Fox 2020. To address the limitations mentioned above, researchers have been exploring for many years alternative solutions to safely store germplasms for later use in fertility preservation programs.…”