DNA test leads Las Vegas family to sue fertility clinic over wrong embryo
LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — A teenager's online DNA test led her family to file a lawsuit Monday against a Las Vegas fertility clinic, alleging the wrong embryo was implanted in her mother 18 years ago and the parents who raised her are not biologically related to her, the 8 News Now Investigators have learned.
Until 2023, the teenager's parents believed their daughter was the result of in vitro fertilization — an embryo created, in this case, from the father's sperm and a donor egg, the lawsuit said. An Ancestry.com DNA test showed the teenager's parents are not biologically related to her.
"My client had more tears than I've ever seen someone shed, because what he thought was his daughter — isn't," attorney Robert Murdock said. Murdock filed the lawsuit Monday in Clark County District Court. The teenager's mother died in 2022 before her daughter took the test. Murdock spoke with the 8 News Now Investigators on behalf of the daughter and her father.
In 2004, the couple sought help in conceiving a child from the now-closed Nevada Fertility C.A.R.E.S., Murdock said.
"IVF is an absolutely amazing thing," Murdock said. "We are living in amazing times that we can help out couples who have fertility issues. It's an amazing thing."
According to the lawsuit, the couple chose an egg donor based in Arizona to combine with the father's sperm to have a child.
"This was a way to have his heritage move on and it turns out it's not and it's a little too late for that," Murdock said.
According to the lawsuit, the DNA result showed that neither the teenager's father's sperm nor the donor egg were implanted in the mother. Instead, the implant embryo came from another Las Vegas couple, the lawsuit said.
It was unclear what happened to the original embryo – the one from the teenager's father and the egg donor – and if that embryo was implanted in another woman, the lawsuit said.
"Is your client worried that he could have fathered children that he doesn't even know about?" 8 News Now Investigator David Charns asked Murdock.
"Because again, where did that embryo go?" Murdock said. "Was that implanted in someone else?"
Nevada Fertility C.A.R.E.S. and its subsequent fertility clinic run under the same doctor named in the lawsuit ceased operation in the early 2010s, records said. The lawsuit names the doctor and the embryologist who reportedly worked with the family. Both the doctor and embryologist remain working in the IVF industry, the lawsuit said.
The doctor has no citation history with the Nevada Board of Medical Examiners, however, around the same time as the reported mix-up, records show she settled a $30,000 lawsuit for "negligence in freezing and storing embryos," documents said.
"In this case, the biological child is not his, so as a result, he has to go adopt her," Murdock said, adding her birth certificate will also have to be amended. "The real point of this is finding out what happened, why and hopefully making sure that this is the only mistake out there."
Neither the doctor nor the embryologist named in the lawsuit returned requests for comment Monday. The lawsuit cites negligence and malpractice and demands a jury decide any culpability and potential damages.
