19 Mar San Francisco Fertility Clinic Sued Over Egg and Embryo Tank Failure
By NBC Los Angeles/nbclosangeles.com
Published at 8:24 AM PDT on Mar 16, 2018
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San Francisco Fertility Clinic Sued Over Embryo Tank Failure
“Our clients’ embryos as well as their dreams of future children were irrevocably destroyed,” Peiffer Wolf Carr & Kane attorney Adam Wolf said
A San Francisco fertility clinic is facing two lawsuits over the possible destruction of thousands of frozen eggs and embryos in a storage tank that malfunctioned.
A Sacramento-area couple, Jonathan and Megan Bauer, sued Pacific Fertility Center in federal court on Thursday. Their attorney, Adam Wolf, says the couple lost all eight embryos they were keeping at the center when the nitrogen level in a storage tank dropped in a March 4 malfunction.
The Bauers had been storing the embryos for several years, and the woman was set to undergo an implantation in April, Wolf said. The couple are now in their late 30s — potentially reducing the chance of pregnancy. They also are not sure they can afford additional fertilization procedures, Wolf said.
“Our clients’ embryos as well as their dreams of future children were irrevocably destroyed,” he said.
Liquid nitrogen tank fails at Cleveland’s University Hospitals Fertility Center, damaging more than 2,000 embryos and eggs.(Published Friday, March 9, 2018)
And an unidentified woman sued the center on Tuesday after she said her eggs were also destroyed.
A call to Pacific Fertility was not immediately returned.
The malfunction occurred the same day a storage tank at a fertility clinic in suburban Cleveland failed, potentially destroying as many as 2,000 eggs and embryos, but there is no known connection between the two.
The clinic in suburban Cleveland run by University Hospitals is also facing lawsuits.
The Bauers’ lawsuit accuses Pacific Fertility Center of negligence, saying it could have prevented the damage if it had “an adequately operating monitoring system” to catch the rising temperature in the tank.
The lawsuit seeks class-action status to represent other people affected by the Pacific Fertility Center failure.
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