A Las Vegas father and daughter have filed a lawsuit against an IVF doctor, embryologist and related staff after the results of a 2023 DNA test allegedly showed the father and daughter, now 18, are not biologically related to each other. The mix-up was allegedly discovered after the daughter took a DNA test in 2023.
The father, who is remaining anonymous along with his daughter, alleges in his lawsuit, filed on Sept. 30 in Clark County District Court, that he and his now-deceased wife went to Dr. Rachel McConnell, who led Nevada Fertility C.A.R.E.S., a now-defunct fertility clinic, in 2004 and underwent the IVF process to create an embryo with an egg donor they selected. The father believed the embryo was created with a donor egg and his sperm, with the help of Dee Harris, an embryologist. According to the lawsuit, an embryo was successfully implanted, and the late wife would go on to give birth to the couple’s daughter in October 2006.
But when the daughter took a DNA test through Ancestry.com, and the results came back on Oct. 6, 2023, the daughter learned the man she knew was not her biological father, and according to the lawsuit, the father “has no idea what happened to the embryo created with his sperm.”
Ancestry DNA test kit.
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“Because of the actions of Defendants, and each of them, [the father] was deprived of the opportunity to create life from his heritage as was promised and planned by Defendants,” the lawsuit claims.
The lawsuit alleges McConnell and defendants were reckless and negligent when providing IVF services, which were allegedly a “clear departure from standard of care for IVF procedures,” causing “extreme and severe emotional upset” to the anonymous father and daughter.
“The departure from the standard of care, as well as the departure from ordinary care, was so reckless and outrageous that Defendants, and each of them, acted with implied malice and with a conscious disregard for the rights and safety of others,” the lawsuit claims.
The lawsuit also claims the father and daughter “now have to undergo adoption proceedings to legalize their parent-child relationship,” a process that will require “a significant sum of money.”
According to the filing, the plaintiff is asking for a trial and damages.
ABC News has reached out to McConnell and Harris via their employer and former employer and to Ancestry.com but has not yet received a comment.
The father and daughter declined to be interviewed as well.
The law firm representing the father and daughter, Murdock and Associates, told ABC News in a statement, “The problem at the end of the day is that we believe that the meticulous protocols that should have been followed were not.”
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