The Connecticut Supreme Court faces philosophical questions about the value of life this week when it hears an appeal by two people who claim they learned as adults that they were conceived after a reproductive health specialist treating their mothers substituted his sperm for that of their fathers.

The bond between siblings is too important to not be explicitly recognised as a human right. The law needs to recognise the right of siblings to stay together, reunite if they’re separated, and identify and connect with each other in the case of genetically-related siblings raised in different families.

Kramer, who still runs the Donor Sibling Registry — it now has more than 92,000 members —  isn’t impressed with the promise of revealing information when a child turns 18. She believes that making kids wait is harmful. “Nowhere ever in history, anywhere on the planet,” says Kramer, “has anyone deemed it in a human being’s best interest to be kept from their close genetic relatives for the first 18 years of their life.”

"It is the first law of its kind in the U.S. Australia and a number of European countries already prohibit anonymous sperm and egg donations, giving donor-conceived people access to more information about their identities and family histories."
 
This is inaccurate as those donor-conceived people are conceived with US and Danish donors. (As their donor pools dried up, eg. in Australia, Canada, and the UK.) So no, DCP in those countries do not "have access to more information about their identities and family histories." They're in the same position as everyone else conceived with US and Danish sperm.

Nearly half of all audited samples-about 42%-were found to have errors.

These included lost or incorrectly labeled samples and problems with storage and handling that affected sample quality. As a result, thousands of sperm donations are now set to be discarded due to these identification errors.

Wendy Kramer, director and co-founder of the Donor Sibling Registry, disagrees. “[O]ur research paints a different picture. In our first published study of 155 egg donors, we found that 30.3% reported Ovarian Hyper Stimulation Syndrome (OHSS),” she previously wrote. “In our second survey of 176 egg donors in 2014, we found that 32.4% of egg donors reported complications such as OHSS and infection. In our third Study of 363 egg donors in 2021, 22.4% reported experiencing OHSS.”

Wendy Kramer is working to change that. Her son, Ryan, was conceived with donor sperm and born in 1990. She was honest with him about his conception from an early age. When Ryan was about 6 years old, he asked to meet his biological father. The sperm bank wouldn’t share any information. So around 2000, Kramer started to connect with other people like her and Ryan to create The Donor Sibling Registry, a nonprofit organization that has enabled more than 25,000 half-siblings and/or their donors to meet to date (including many of Greene’s donor-conceived children). 

In 2005, Kramer’s son took a DNA test, which led mother and son to seek out and build a relationship with his biological father. To date, Wendy and Ryan Kramer have also identified 28 half-brothers and sisters. Kramer says that many of those siblings weren’t told by their parents that they were donor-conceived and were caught off-guard when they learned the truth through genetic testing. “You get families that are imploding. Kids who are struggling. Trauma,” she says. “Some of [Ryan’s] half-siblings thought it was a prank. They deleted the emails from the half-siblings saying, ‘Someone’s pranking people in 23andMe. My parents didn’t use a donor.’” 

Kramer recommends that donor parents tell their kids the truth before the child can even speak, and that sperm banks should enable connections at any age. Just as openness has risen around adoption, she’d like to see that happen with donor conception. “Then it’s just a part of their story to be proud of,” she says.

After a Connecticut woman took a DNA test, her life was turned upside down. She discovered she was likely a product of fertility fraud and that she had at least 22 half siblings, one of whom was her high school boyfriend.

A lawsuit accused the doctor of 'surreptitiously' inserting his sperm into the patient instead of a donor's.

Their donor died unexpectedly. Every time a new sibling finds them, they, the recipients — not the sperm bank, not the donor's family — have to break the news.

In June 2023, Anke Wesenbeek, a 30-year-old Belgian donor-conceived woman won a landmark court case after a year-long battle to gain information about her paternal heritage.

Both were from Utah and had sons born via IVF. But the Johnsons and the McNeils, it turned out, had much more in common than that …

Finding lots of siblings is common and a result of a lack of donor limitations, co-founder says
Wendy Kramer is a co-founder and director of the Donor Sibling Registry, a Colorado organization that helps people conceived via sperm, egg, or embryo donation find relatives. It happens every day through her organization, she said.

She has been connecting people from Siperko’s group for decades, including 38 of Siperko’s siblings. Altogether, the group has connected nearly 25,000 people with their half-siblings and biological parents. And while some people are happy to find so many siblings, there is still an underlying issue she wants to see addressed: a lack of limitations on donating sperm.

Many sperm banks initially promised that each donor would result in no more than 10 kids, Kramer said, but − evidenced by Siperko's case − that obviously didn't happen. 

What sperm banks are missing, Kramer said, is "accurate record-keeping on the children born."

“That's why we have so many half-sibling groups over 100 and even over 200," she told USA TODAY. "Those groups just keep growing.”

“We all came to understand that that was a complete lie and they still lie about it,” she said, noting that in some cases, people find out they have more than 200 siblings.

Large sperm banks also ship sperm to clinics across the country and sometimes worldwide, she said. Her organization has asked donors and parents of donor-conceived people what they think the limit should be and the most common number they hear is 10. 

She said it’s unethical and irresponsible for the reproductive medicine industry to create so many half-siblings groups without updating families on medical information and limiting the number of births there are from each donor.

Part of the problem, she said, is that companies need to do a better job at keeping track of births. They aren’t always reported and record-keeping isn’t as precise as it should be.

“It's just about a profit for selling sperm with no thought whatsoever given to the human beings they're helping to create,” Kramer said. 

“I used California Cryobank and my son has … half-siblings coast to coast, up and down, even in Puerto Rico,” she said. “You never know where your half-siblings can be.”

What's it like to discover siblings?
How people respond when they find out they have so many siblings depends largely on the person, said Kramer. For introverts, finding out about lots of siblings could be “scarier” than it is for extroverts, she said. It’s deeply personal and there’s no telling how incorporating new people into your life will go.

But according to Kramer, there are many benefits to finding one’s siblings as well, including both medical and psychological. 

“It's an innate human desire to want to know where we come from and who we come from,” she told USA TODAY. “Allowing donor-conceived people to know about their ancestry, their close genetic relatives and their family medical history is crucial.”

There are some key differences between the experiences of adopted and donor-conceived kids, but one thing remains the same: They should know about their origins.

A Southern California couple is suing a fertility clinic for fraudulent concealment claiming they mistakenly transferred an embryo carrying a rare stomach cancer gene and then falsified patient records to cover up the error.

Jason and Melissa Diaz claim their young son now faces the potential of stomach cancer or possible stomach surgery to avoid the rare cancer. They filed suit in Los Angeles Superior Court on Wednesday against Huntington Reproductive Center Medical Group, also called HRC Fertility. The couple’s doctor and IVF coordinator are also named as defendants in the lawsuit.

The report shows more than half of donated sperm used in UK fertility clinics comes from abroad.
52% of new sperm donors registered in the UK were from "donor imports" in 2020 (including 27% from the USA and 21% from Denmark)
The number of new UK sperm donors has remained consistent at around 400 a year since 2012, while new imported donors have more than doubled from almost 200 in 2013 to 400 in 2020.
Meanwhile, from late 2023 onwards, most donor-conceived people in the UK turning 18 will be able to apply to access identifying information about their donors.
However, the HFEA admits there could be problems contacting a biological parent if they live abroad. 
[Yes, the DSR has been saying this for years: local laws are virtually meaningless when the donors come from the US and Denmark.]

But the US sperm-donation industry “is largely unethical and irresponsible,” according to Wendy Kramer, an American author and advocate who has been fighting for the rights of donor-conceived children for more than twenty years. Most US sperm banks promise donor anonymity, making it difficult for families who use the service to learn about health developments in their donor that may be genetic or to know about other children conceived from that donor’s sperm. Kramer, who has written extensively about the problems of donor anonymity and advocates for more medical screening, says that, with insufficient oversight and regulation of the sperm-donor industry, “money is put before the well-being of the children being born.”
 
In 2000, along with her son, Ryan, Kramer co-founded the Donor Sibling Registry, an organization that helps donor-conceived people track down their donors and half siblings. (The process ensures the donor and siblings agree to be contacted.) The organization has since helped more than 25,000 people in more than 100 countries contact their biological families and has allowed Ryan to contact some of his half siblings.

He was also able to find his donor through DNA testing and publicly available information. “If we had not met my son’s biological father, we would not have known about some pretty serious medical issues,” Kramer says. Now Ryan and his half siblings can watch out for signs and get annual screenings for inherited health conditions.

Three-quarters (75 percent) of sperm used in the UK is imported from overseas.

Lifting anonymity from birth would pave the way for the possibility of more contact between donors, donor-conceived people and their parents, and such a proposal would be likely to spark intensive debate.

Today, at 18-years old, Daily-Anderson has 237 half brothers and sisters that he knows of. Some live near him in Virginia, but others are spread out across the United States and the world. According to the family, all the siblings are linked to the same man who donated his sperm to Fairfax Cryobank over many years. [NOTE: the DSR connected almost 200 of these half-siblings, not a "small handful" as the article says.]

Allegations against Dr. Paul Brennan Jones surfaced in 2019, when the now-grown children of his former patients found each other through DNA tests.

On July 7, 2021, Sultan implanted what was supposed to be the couple’s embryo into the woman’s uterus during a visit to the clinic, court records state. The following month, the couple confirmed they were expecting a baby. The pregnancy progressed normally — then the couple’s obstetrician asked for the genetic tests that later revealed their DNA did not match that of the fetus, court records state.

A Florida woman who accused a Vermont doctor of impregnating her with his own sperm instead of a donor’s in 1977 was awarded $5.25 million by a federal judge on Wednesday.

In 1989, Norman Barwin, a respected fertility doctor, helped my mother get pregnant with donated sperm. Decades later, we discovered that Barwin was secretly inseminating patients with sperm that he had no right to use, including his own. How I finally learned the truth about my biological father.

The family has sued Nicholas Spirtos, the fertility specialist who performed the procedure in 1991, and the Ohio-based Summa Health System.

In May of 2020, Laura and Dave Gunner received the worst news parents can get: their son, Steven, had died of an accidental opioid overdose. He was 27. While the Gunners were devastated, as you can imagine, they had little idea that more heartbreak was on the way.

After Steven’s death, the Gunners activated an account at the Donor Sibling Registry, a non-profit that connects sperm and egg donors with donor-conceived individuals and families. Since Steven was conceived with donated sperm from Fairfax Cryobank’s donor 1558 and his mother’s egg, they hoped they might catch a glimpse of him in some of his donor siblings. They also felt an obligation to inform other parents and donor siblings that Steven, whom they loved with all their heart, had suffered from schizophrenia. As such, he was prone to addictions and erratic behavior and had been hospitalized on numerous occasions for mental health emergencies. 

The biological father of Steven Gunner, who battled mental illness before a fatal overdose, had his own psychiatric problems

A Rochester doctor is accused of using his own sperm to inseminate a woman after telling the prospective parents that the sperm would come from a separate donor, a new lawsuit alleges.

"The lawsuit alleges medical malpractice against Wortman and several employees at the facility, claiming that Wortman knowingly implanted his own sperm in the plaintiff’s mother and later treated her [his biological daughter] from 2012 through 2021, including conducting numerous pelvic examinations, transvaginal ultrasounds, and IUC placements under sedation."

Both families are preparing to file 2 separate lawsuits against the University of Utah Center for Reproductive Medicine.

Families who claim disgraced Ottawa fertility doctor Norman Barwin used the wrong sperm — or even his own sperm — in the conception of at least 100 children could receive a portion of a multi-million-dollar payout after a judge certified the class-action lawsuit launched in 2016.

The Ontario Superior Court certified the class-action suit in the landmark case at a hearing on Wednesday, which includes a negotiated proposed settlement worth $13.375 million. 

BRISTOL, CT — A Superior Court judge awarded a Bristol family $37.6 million in a medical malpractice lawsuit against the state in connection with an insemination procedure at the UConn Health Center that led to the death of one child and a lifetime of medical needs for her twin, according to the Hartford Courant.
The Courant reports Jean-Marie Monroe-Lynch and Aaron Lynch filed a lawsuit that claimed Monroe-Lynch was inseminated with sperm from a donor who carried CMV, a virus that can cause severe birth defects or fetal death if contracted during pregnancy.
One child died in utero in January 2015 and her twin brother sustained a brain injury that requires lifetime medical attention, according to the Courant. 

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Erin Crowder says her parents told her when she turned 18 her father had fertility problems and she was born after her mother was inseminated with sperm from an anonymous donor.
But Crowder, now 45, said it was only when she underwent a genetic test from Ancestry.com two years ago that she discovered the identity of her biological father.
Of all people, he was her mother’s Louisville fertility doctor, Dr. Marvin Yussman.
She learned as well she had at least seven half-siblings, all fathered by Yussman, who used his own sperm to inseminate patients.
Her mother, Susan Crowder, 73, formerly of Hopkinsville, said she was livid when she learned about she calls Yussman’s “unconscionable and depraved” conduct, which has come to be known as fertility fraud.

Bianca Voss, of Clifton, New Jersey, raised her daughter, Roberta, only knowing her father was an anonymous sperm donor that was allegedly selected by her fertility specialist, Dr. Martin Greenberg.  “He did say, ‘Do you mind if the donor was Jewish?’ And I said no. I kind of thought it might be a medical student from the hospital, but that was it,” Voss said.  Voss says at the time the doctor asked if she had a preference for ethnicity or religion. He charged a $100 fee to procure the sperm. But recently, daughter Roberta, now of Palisades, New York, learned from the DNA ancestry website 23AndMe that her father is Dr. Greenberg, himself. Back in 1983, Greenberg had a practice in an Upper East Side building. Today, he lives in Aventura, Florida, outside Miami.

“You’re playing Russian roulette with this,” says Cassandra Bach, a fertility coach and mother of a donor-conceived child. When she decided to get pregnant on her own via a sperm bank donor in 2010, she was told that sperm from the donor she chose wouldn’t be given to more than 40 families. But when her daughter was 2 years old, Bach joined the Donor Sibling Registry (DSR), a nonprofit that helps connect donor-conceived people with biological relatives (many parents join so there’s no chance of their child dating an unknown half-sibling). Over time, she discovered her daughter had 114 half-siblings spanning four countries on three continents. “The sperm bank was tracking siblings via self-reporting, and not everyone reports when they’ve had a child,” says Bach.

These are the reasons the industry needs massive reform, says Wendy Kramer, director and cofounder of DSR. Many parents of donor-conceived children are pushing for mandatory background checks on donors, as well as mandatory reporting about where else they’re donating and accurate tracking of the number of children created by donors. Clinics “need to enforce reporting from donors if their health history has changed,” says Kramer. “Many of the people who donate to these banks are 19-year-old kids, so you’re getting a snapshot of one day in the life of a healthy young person. His father could die of a heart attack the next year, or he could develop cancer later in life, and you wouldn’t know.” She’s been pushing for change for years now, but progress has been slow. “The thing is, it costs money to keep accurate records and to do proper vetting,” says Kramer.

One long-touted pro of using a sperm bank was the promise of donor anonymity. But the idea isn’t realistic anymore with at-home DNA testing kits, and, some experts argue, total anonymity is harmful for donor-conceived people anyway. In fact, 94 percent of donor-conceived people strongly support the option to access info about how many siblings they have and the identity of their donor, and 99 percent want details about the medical history of their donor, per a recent survey. “Kids will ideally find out they are donor-conceived early in life, or they will find out later through a DNA test or family member,” says Kramer. “Either way, they’ll have questions and may want to make contact, and all parties should understand and be open to that.”

The case against a retired Idaho gynecologist accused of using his sperm to inseminate a patient seeking fertility treatments has been dismissed.

Besides health concerns, there is another important reason for limiting donor’s fecundity. The children of sperm and egg donors, like those who are adopted, often want to trace their blood relations. But it is difficult to forge strong relationships when vast numbers of children are involved. Wendy Kramer of the Donor Sibling Registry, which helps connect members of donor families, says this is an example of how the contract between clinics and would-be parents has ignored the interests of the children it produces. She established the group in 2000 when her then ten-year-old son, conceived using donor sperm, became curious about his wider family. Last month he learned of the existence of two new half-siblings, bringing the tally to 22. Ms. Kramer had been told her sperm donor would father no more than ten children, a limit she considers sensible.

One man, hundreds of children and a burning question: Why?

More than 100 women and men have begun a class action lawsuit against Monash IVF following claims the national fertility specialist may have inadvertently destroyed healthy embryos through a faulty genetic screening test.

Documents were filed in the Supreme Court of Victoria on Wednesday against Monash IVF and the Adelaide Fertility Centre on behalf of patients who attended the clinics between May last year and October this year.

"Dr. Philip Peven is credited with delivering around 9,000 babies during his 40-year career in Detroit, Michigan. Now a group of siblings who found they were genetically matched after doing an online DNA test have discovered they are related to Dr. Peven, who was their parents' doctor, and believe he is their father."

"Dr. Quincy Fortier ... over the course of decades impregnated an unknown number of female patients at his Women’s Hospital. [But] Fortier wasn’t simply a cretin who surreptitiously implanted innocents with his own sperm — he was a serial pedophile who preyed upon his own children, including one stepdaughter whom he personally impregnated."

"Traci wanted more medical history information, but quickly learned that in California, donor-conceived children have no rights to sue their biological parent."

NOTE from DSR: It's important for people to know that this phenomenon of doctors inseminating their own patients was a regular and common occurrence from (at least) the 1940s through the 1980s when all sperm was fresh, not frozen. Once cryopreservation and sperm banking came into place, this practice seems to have almost stopped (except for a couple of rogue doctors).

"A deceased gynecologist has fathered at least 17 children with women thinking they were receiving sperm from anonymous donors, a Dutch hospital said Tuesday, in the latest IVF scandal to hit the country."

"The Georgia Supreme Court on Monday decided claims that a sperm donor lied about his mental and criminal history led to damages in line with consumer fraud, but that 'life itself can never be an injury.'"

"He fathered at least 36 children, but the parents didn't know he had no education and a history of hereditary mental illness."

This story is an example of the UK not enforcing the "10 family limit." [Note: The DSR does NOT support this donor's main reason for suing, which was the fact that the clinic sold his sperm to gay couples and single mothers. We do, however, recognize that the clinic did not limit the number of children created from the donor's sperm.]

"A fertility doctor could have fathered hundreds of children, secretly using his own sperm instead of the donor sperm his patients thought they were receiving."

"A San Diego County woman filed a lawsuit Wednesday, alleging that a local physician she consulted for fertility issues decades ago used his own sperm to artificially inseminate her, only discovering the fact after her adult son took a DNA test."

"Multiple families victimized by 'fertility fraud' took action today by filing cases against doctors in California and Virginia/West Virginia. The doctors are alleged to have inserted their own sperm into their patients, contrary to the doctors’ representations and their patients’ wishes."

"On Wednesday, September 2, the NW Cyrobank in Spokane, which acquired donor vial inventory and records of Cryo LLC in 2016, sent an email to families and revealed that donor 518 and 901A were the same person. The mother we spoke to told us that the donor is believed to have fathered children across Washington, Idaho, and Montana and that some of the kids have health problems such as autism, ADHD, anxiety, and her son has hemophilia, a rare blood disease that can be passed on by a father."

"With little regulation in the sperm bank industry, stories of mistakes and sloppy record-keeping are growing. It’s blowing up the lives of donor-conceived children."

"A Georgia sperm bank claims no accountability for selling sperm of man with a criminal history and a diagnosis of bi-polar with schizo-affective disorder. 

In the end, Nahmias summed up the debate asking, 'just to be clear, what you’re asserting, a sperm bank can completely misrepresent everything about the sperm itself and charge whatever amount of money based on those representations and completely lie to every customer it has - and nobody can do a thing about it?'

Xytex response was under the law, yes.

That’s why 38 law professors from across the United States filed their own legal analysis with the court asking justices to allow the Normans’ lawsuit, and others like it, to go to trial.

In the brief, written by Georgia State University College of Law Professor Timothy Lytton, they argue, '“exposing sperm banks to liability will give them a powerful incentive to exercise reasonable care in vetting donors and providing accurate information to their clients.'”

Former fertility patients of Dr. Nicholas J. Spirtos at Summa Health System filed a major new lawsuit after a shocking revelation was discovered by an Ancestry.com DNA test. The couple had undergone an insemination procedure intended to fertilize the wife’s egg with the husband’s sperm. But due to an apparent mix-up of sperm samples, their daughter is not biologically related to the man who raised her. Attorneys for the family at the law firm Peiffer Wolf Carr Kane Conway & Wise (Peiffer Wolf) said further testing indicated the sperm came from a different patient of Spirtos.

At least 100 people have been found to have been conceived using the wrong sperm while being treated by Dr. Barwin, at least 17 of whom were conceived through the use of his own sperm. Dr. Barwin's medical license was revoked in 2019, previously having been suspended in 2013 for the same conduct, and again in 2014.

In July 2021, an Ontario court certified a class action suit against Dr. Barwin for battery, breach of trust, breach of contract, negligence, and other torts. The class includes some 226 plaintiffs, including the aforementioned people conceived by Dr. Barwin using the wrong sperm, as well as patients who were wrongly inseminated with the sperm, and patients whose sperm was wrongly used to conceive someone else's child. The same month, the plaintiffs and Dr. Barwin came to a proposed settlement that has since been approved by the court. The settlement is considered to be the first of its kind, not only in Canada but internationally (although unfortunately, Dr. Barwin's actions in using the wrong sperm are not unique).

The reason that the proposed Barwin settlement is so significant is twofold: It is a large class action settlement (more than 13 million Canadian dollars), and some of the settlement funds would be directed to create a private DNA database.  

Dr. Morris Wortman is being sued by his alleged biological daughter, Morgan Hellquest.The lawsuit says in 1983, the plaintiff's mother Mrs. Levey, became a patient of Dr. Morris Wortman at his OB/GYN medical practice in Rochester. The practice offered fertility medicine to patients trying to conceive a child. 

In late 1983 through January 1985, the lawsuit says Wortman inseminated Mrs. Levey two to three times monthly in either his office or at Highland Hospital in exchange for Levey's payment of $50.00 in cash or check for each insemination. The suit claims Levey was under the impression she was receiving an anonymous medical student’s live sperm. In January 1985, Wortman inseminated Levey with a live sperm she became pregnant. 

Hellquest says through DNA testing, she later discovered that she shared DNA with Wortman’s daughters and had six half-siblings with the same father.

The suit also claims Wortman has a family history of mental illness, despite telling Hellquest's mother and step-father that the true father would have a clean health history.

BRISTOL, CT — A Superior Court judge awarded a Bristol family $37.6 million in a medical malpractice lawsuit against the state in connection with an insemination procedure at the UConn Health Center that led to the death of one child and a lifetime of medical needs for her twin, according to the Hartford Courant.
The Courant reports Jean-Marie Monroe-Lynch and Aaron Lynch filed a lawsuit that claimed Monroe-Lynch was inseminated with sperm from a donor who carried CMV, a virus that can cause severe birth defects or fetal death if contracted during pregnancy.
One child died in utero in January 2015 and her twin brother sustained a brain injury that requires lifetime medical attention, according to the Courant. 

IVF patients across Australia fearing they've lost their only chance at having biological children are suing a major provider over the destruction of embryos that may have been viable.  Monash IVF is at the centre of a lawsuit filed in Victoria's Supreme Court on Wednesday, over a world-first non-invasive genetic testing program that has now been suspended.  More than 100 people have already expressed interest in the action but upward of 1000 could be affected, lead lawyer Michel Margalit told AAP.

From Molly McCafferty, lawyer and DSR Board member: "The court denied California Cryobank’s motion to dismiss, allowing Branzell to proceed with his case. California Cryobank was trying to get the case dismissed from federal court on a technical basis — arguing that all parties were from the same state and so the federal court did not have jurisdiction to hear the case. The court has ruled that the parties can engage in discovery to resolve this issue. After discovery is conducted, California Cryobank could attempt again to dismiss the case on these grounds." January 2021: Bryce Branzell settled with California Cryobank with prejudice, which means Branzell cannot attempt to bring claims against California Cryobank in the future.  The settlement amount remains undisclosed for now.

"In 1988, Plaintiff and her husband turned to Defendant for fertility treatment. Without Plaintiff’s knowledge or consent, Defendant used his own sperm to impregnate her, rather than, as promised, sperm from an anonymous donor."

"In 1978, Plaintiff and her husband turned to Defendant for fertility treatment. Without Plaintiff’s knowledge or consent, Defendant used his own sperm to impregnate her, rather than, as promised, sperm from an anonymous donor."

Wendy Norman et al. v. Xytex Sperm Bank. Supreme Court of Georgia BRIEF OF AMICI CURIAE LAW PROFESSORS OF TORT LAW, FAMILY LAW, AND HEALTH LAW IN SUPPORT OF PLAINTIFF-APPELLANTS.
September 2020 Update: Georgia Supreme Court Rules Sperm Donor Case Falls In Line With 'Consumer Fraud'
"The Georgia Supreme Court on Monday decided claims that a sperm donor lied about his mental and criminal history led to damages in line with consumer fraud, but that 'life itself can never be an injury.'"
 

Branzell v. California Cryobank/NW Cryobank. "The acts of NW Cryobank have resulted in one individual who did not want to be a sperm donor having at least one child conceived by artificial insemination. Worse still, NW Cryobank cannot determine how many others were provided sperm from Branzell, or continue to be provided his sperm. Branzell chose not to become a sperm donor because he did not want children he had no relationship with. It has now been confirmed that Branzell is the genetic father of a child he has never met. Branzell is now haunted by what he does not know, specifically how many other mistakes NW Cryobank made, and how many other children were or will be conceived with his sperm." January 2021: Bryce Branzell settled with California Cryobank with prejudice, which means Branzell cannot attempt to bring claims against California Cryobank in the future.  The settlement amount remains undisclosed for now.

Teuscher v. CCB-NWB: Lawsuit against California Cryobank/NW Cryobank. "NW Cryo has engaged in a series of deceptive business practices...." Amended Complaint, filed August 12, 2019. Exhibit A; Exhibit B; Exhibit C. Second Amended Complaint, filed November 12, 2019. October 2019 Above the Law article: Beware Of The Home DNA Test! Mom Strikes Back Against Sperm Bank. December 2019: Plaintiff's Opposition to Defendant's Partial Motion to Dismiss: NW Cryo has brought a second motion to dismiss some claims in the lawsuit: the consumer protection claim, deceptive and unfair practices including confiscating Danielle Teuscher's gametes — the gametes that would help to make a genetic sibling for her daughter, re-classifying donor from Open ID to anonymous, taking down the sibling registry it maintains, and withholding access to medical information of donor, the declaratory judgment claim (contracting with customers against the public policy of the state of Washington) and Ms. Teuscher's intentional emotional distress claim for NW Cryo's retaliatory and intentional actions of sending a Cease and Desist letter and threatening to file a lawsuit against her and illegally taking away her gametes. Ms. Teuscher and her daughter's team of lawyers, led by Law Offices of Jill H. Teitel, PLLC are working to fight the baseless motion. February 2020 Above the Law article: Sperm Bank Case Has Serious Implications For Information and Property Rights. November 2020 Update: This lawsuit was settled out of court for $75,000.December 2020: read the case summary with Q & As by Jill H. Teitel, Esq. attorney for Danielle Teuscher and Z.F. 

OSHU Lawsuit: Dr. B.C. aka Dr. John Doe v. Oregon Health & Science University. An Oregon doctor who says he discovered that his donated sperm was used to father at least 17 children in violation of an agreement that allowed for the creation of no more than five children filed a $5.25 million lawsuit against Oregon Health & Science University. Oregon doctor says his donated sperm was used to father at least 17 children, sues OHSU for $5.25 million

Vidiksis v. California Cryobank: Class Action Complaint filed against California Cryobank for conversion of and tortious interference with donor sperm from Manhattan Cryobank. From the attorney: "Hi Wendy. I hope you are doing well. Would you mind letting your followers know about the new class action we filed last Friday against California Cryobank? Basically, California Cryobank purchased some assets of Manhattan Cryobank, including all donor sperm. Many people have purchased donor sperm from MCB and were storing it with MCB in hopes of conceiving a second child with the same donor sperm. Now, CCB will not give them access to the donor sperm, claiming that the FDA will not let them release it for some unknown reason."

Frankiewicz and Perez v. Manhattan Cryobank: Lawsuit against Manhattan Cryobank/California Cryobank. From the attorney: "For years, Defendant MCB sold sperm to the public which it knew could contain genetic diseases. Worse, MCB’s own chairman of the board recognized the inadequacies of MCB’s genetic testing regimen and touted the benefits of a more robust screening technology. Nonetheless, MCB, despite having access to such technology, chose not to use it on sperm donated prior to November 1, 2014, despite agreeing and warranting to its customers that it performed a 'complete and thorough screening' for genetic diseases. Read the NY Post article: Manhattan sperm bank didn’t properly screen for genetic diseases: suit

Jane Doe 1 and 2 v. Xytex: Wrongful birth lawsuit against Xytex. Xytex sperm donor #9623 was a mentally ill schizophrenic felon. In April 2016, other parents who had used Xytex donor #9623 filed a complaint in San Francisco County Superior Court, alleging "intentional misrepresentation, negligent misrepresentation, strict products liability, products liability based on negligence, breach of express warranty, breach of implied warranty of merchantability, battery, negligence, false advertising, wrongful birth, specific performance, punitive damages, and violations of the California Unfair Competition law."

Jacoba Ballard and Deborah Pierce v. Anonymous Health Care Provider d/b/a Anonymous and John Doe, M.D. Dr Donald Cline of Indianapolis used his own sperm to inseminate patients and father more than 50 children. "Specimens from a single donor were to be used in no more than three successful artificial insemination procedures in a well—defined geographic area. Therefore, specimens from a single donor were not to be used in more than three successful artificial insemination procedures at Anonymous. 34. The policy described in paragraph 33 was important to limit the risk of accidental incest resulting from many closely biologically related individuals living near each other and unaware of their biological relationships. 35. At no time did John Doe, M.D. ever disclose to any patient that he would use his own sperm to inseminate them. 

Jane Doe v. Idant Laboratories. "The boys are part of an autism cluster involving at least a dozen children scattered across the United States, Canada, and Europe, all conceived with sperm from the same donor. Many of the children have secondary diagnoses of ADHD, dyslexia, mood disorders, epilepsy and other developmental and learning disabilities."

Jane Doe v. NECC. "Jane Doe, the plaintiff, brought this equity action against the defendants New England Cryogenic Center, Inc. (NECC), and its director, John Rizza (Rizza), seeking an order requiring them to disclose the name of a sperm donor reflected on NECC's records as donor number D237 and whom we shall call D237. Doe claims that she was artificially inseminated in London, England, with D237's sperm and consequently bore twin daughters."

Donna Donovan v. Idant Laboratories. In 1995, Donna Donovan was artificially inseminated with sperm provided by Idant Laboratories. Ms. Donovan signed a consent form in which Idant represented that “(1) semen stored at Idant is exceptionally safe; (2) Idant has a screening program that far exceeds mandated standards and (3) Idant’s donors go through a rigorous screening process to ensure that they have a good genetic background and history.” Donovan gave birth to a daughter, Brittany, in January 1996 using sperm from Idant Donor G738. Brittany was diagnosed with developmental difficulties related to her status as a carrier of the Fragile X gene (FMR1). Testing revealed that Donor G378, not Donna Donovan, carried the Fragile X gene.

Johnson v. California Cryobank: Lawsuit against California Cryobank. "[CCB] failed to disclose that the sperm they sold to the Johnsons came from a donor with a history of kidney disease called Autosomal Dominant Polycystic Kidney Disease (ADPKD). That sperm was used to conceive [their daughter] Brittany who has been diagnosed to have this serious kidney disease."

United States of America v. Cecil B. Jacobson, Jr., M.D., Case No. 92-5406 and Cr. No. 91-00474-A, 785 F. Supp. 563. "Dr. Cecil B. Jacobson was indicted on fifty-three counts of mail fraud, wire fraud, travel fraud and perjury. In the indictment, the Government alleges that Dr. Jacobson defrauded certain women and their husbands by representing that the women would be inseminated with sperm from an anonymous donor participating in a donor insemination program. The Government further alleges that, contrary to these representations, Dr. Jacobson inseminated these women with his own sperm, thereby becoming the biological father of the children born to certain of his patients."