An Ohio family has filed a lawsuit against a fertility clinic and doctor, claiming there was a sperm mix-up nearly 30 years ago.
Jeanine Harvey, John Harvey, and their daughter, Jessica Galloway, are suing Dr. Nicholas Spirtos and Summa Health System, alleging medical malpractice, negligence, and lack of informed consent, among other claims. They are asking the Court of Common Pleas in Summit County, Ohio, to grant them compensatory damages, costs of suit incurred, and other relief in unspecified amounts after an Ancestry.com DNA kit proved that Galloway was not John Harvey’s biological daughter, according to the filing.
“Mr. and Mrs. Harvey believed that Jessica was genetically related to both of them. They trusted that Defendants would safeguard their most intimate property with the utmost care,” the filing stated. “The only explanation for this devastating news is that Defendants used a stranger’s genetic material to inseminate her, resulting in Jessica’s birth.”
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Summa Health System told CBS News it’s taking the allegation “seriously” and “understand[s] the impact this has on the family” while noting the company has not conducted its own testing.
The couple, who conceived Galloway via artificial insemination at Summa Akron City Hospital in 1992, said that Spirtos injected sperm from a stranger during the procedure, according to a court filing on Wednesday.
The family used additional genealogical testing to track down Galloway’s biological father, who confirmed that he and his wife were also Spirtos’s patients at the same time as the Harveys, according to the filing.
Galloway first learned the truth when she took a DNA test in December 2020 to learn more about her father’s Italian heritage before a scheduled trip to the country, according to the filing.
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The family’s lawsuit is not the first of its kind. In 2019, a New Jersey woman sued a fertility clinic claiming that she was mistakenly impregnated with the sperm of an Asian man, according to NBC News.
Representatives for Summa Health did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.
