In Vitro Fertilization Lawsuits: Embryo Mix-Ups, Custody, and the Alabama Ruling

In vitro fertilization lawsuits in the United States most often arise from two kinds of failures: embryo mix-ups that produce a child with no genetic link to the intended parents, and cryogenic storage malfunctions that destroy eggs and embryos in bulk. Plaintiffs typically sue under medical malpractice and negligence theories, and when custody is disputed, U.S. courts have generally recognized the genetic parents as the legal parents. Damages run from a few thousand dollars to the tens of millions, with most settlements kept confidential.

Recent Embryo Mix-Up Cases

The most prominent current case involves Tiffany Score and Steven Mills, a Central Florida couple who sued the Fertility Center of Orlando and its founder, Dr. Milton McNichol, after discovering that the child born to them was not biologically theirs. Score was implanted on April 7, 2025, with what she believed was one of three embryos the couple had stored at the clinic since 2020. Their daughter, Shea Score Mills, was born on December 11, 2025, and genetic testing confirmed she had no biological connection to either parent.¹

The couple filed suit on January 22, 2026, in Orange County Circuit Court, seeking emergency relief to identify the child’s biological parents, determine whether other patients were affected, and fund genetic testing for families who had used the clinic over the preceding five years.² Judge Margaret Schreiber noted the lack of legal precedent and ordered the parties to establish a process for identifying affected patients. By April 2026, attorneys confirmed Shea’s biological parents had been identified from a pool of 16 potential sets whose procedures coincided with the Score-Mills timing.³ A custody agreement reached in June 2026 gave Score and Mills permanent legal custody of Shea.⁴ What happened to the couple’s own embryos remains unresolved; their attorney said those questions are “still pending” and may never be answered.⁵

A second lawsuit filed in Seminole County Circuit Court in March 2026 against the same clinic alleges that a woman identified as “Jane Doe” was permitted to serve as a surrogate despite a documented history of bipolar disorder and involuntary commitments. The 72-page complaint alleges the embryo transferred to her in October 2024 carried thanatophoric dysplasia, a fatal genetic condition, and the infant died roughly ten days after birth. The suit brings claims for negligence, medical malpractice, battery for performing the transfer without valid informed consent, and exploitation of a vulnerable adult under Florida’s Adult Protective Services Act.⁶ The clinic announced in April 2026 that it was closing.⁷

In Georgia, Krystena Murray filed suit in February 2025 in the State Court of Chatham County against Coastal Fertility Specialists. Murray gave birth in December 2023 to a child with whom she had no genetic connection, confirming the discrepancy with an at-home DNA test after noticing the child’s race differed from what she expected. The biological parents sued for custody and prevailed, and Murray surrendered the child in May 2024.⁸ Her suit alleges negligence, gross negligence, breach of fiduciary duty, battery, lack of informed consent, and violations of the Georgia and South Carolina unfair trade practices statutes, and seeks more than $75,000 in compensatory damages plus punitives. The clinic’s executive director called the incident an “unprecedented error” and an “isolated event” in its 15-year history.⁹

Who Gets Custody When Embryos Are Switched

There is no uniform rule, but a working presumption has developed in U.S. courts: genetic parents are the legal parents. The decisions driving that presumption are two.

In Perry-Rogers v. Fasano, decided by a New York appellate court in 2000, Donna Fasano was mistakenly implanted with embryos belonging to Deborah Perry-Rogers and Robert Rogers. Fasano gave birth in December 1998 to two boys, one her biological son and one genetically the Rogerses’. An investigation found that the embryologist knew the embryos had been implanted in the wrong patient but failed to act.¹⁰ The Fasanos relinquished the child in May 1999, a judge awarded permanent custody to the genetic parents, and when the Fasanos sought visitation the Appellate Division unanimously denied it. The court compared the situation to “a mix-up at the time of a hospital’s discharge of two newborn infants, which should simply be corrected at once,” and held that any bond that had formed was a consequence of the Fasanos’ delay in acting on what they knew.¹¹

Nearly two decades later, Anni and Ashot Manukyan of Glendale, California, discovered that CHA Fertility Center in Los Angeles had implanted their embryo in a woman in New York, who gave birth in March 2019 to twin boys genetically unrelated to her or to each other. A judge ruled in May 2019 that the genetic parents were the legal parents, following Perry-Rogers and a 2016 New York decision expanding parenthood based on intent.¹² The New York couple relinquished both children, and the Manukyans sued seeking emotional and punitive damages.¹³

The presumption is not absolute. A California family court awarded Susan Buchweitz temporary custody of the child she carried after receiving another couple’s embryo, granting the biological father visitation rather than custody. Buchweitz also recovered a $1 million settlement from the clinic.¹⁴ And the Score-Mills resolution went the other way as a matter of agreement, with the birth parents keeping their daughter. Outcomes still turn on the jurisdiction, the timeline of discovery, and how the families themselves want to resolve things.

What Plaintiffs Sue For, and What They Recover

IVF lawsuits generally proceed on medical malpractice and negligence theories: that the clinic or staff failed to meet the standard of care in handling, labeling, or transferring embryos. Plaintiffs commonly add breach of contract, lack of informed consent, and infliction of emotional distress. Some suits add statutory claims under state laws governing reproductive material.¹⁵

Financial outcomes vary widely. A study covering 184,015 IVF cycles over a ten-year period identified 176 claims, with payments made in 21 cases totaling $15 million, and an average settlement for embryo-related claims of roughly $199,000.¹⁶ Individual awards can be far larger. A 2000 case in which a doctor failed to disclose a mix-up produced a $1 million settlement and cost the physician his medical license.¹⁵ A 2021 federal jury in San Francisco awarded over $14 million to five families after a cryogenic tank failure, with individual awards running from $2 million to $7.2 million.¹⁷

A review of 50 IVF malpractice cases filed between 1986 and 2020 found 36% of verdicts favored the plaintiff and 48% favored the defendant, with damages ranging from about $4,200 to $50 million.¹⁸ Two structural hurdles depress recoveries. Courts in some states resist awarding damages for purely emotional harm without accompanying physical injury, and state malpractice caps on noneconomic damages limit what juries can give; California, for example, capped noneconomic damages at $250,000 for much of this period. Many cases also settle under nondisclosure agreements, so the public record understates both frequency and size. A global study by NAPGO identified 215 legal cases worldwide arising from IVF errors, producing 259 initial lawsuits and roughly $7.37 million in documented damages from catastrophic storage failures alone.¹⁹

Class Actions After Storage Failures

The largest IVF cases by number of plaintiffs have come from storage failures rather than individual mix-ups. In March 2018, a $5 million class action was filed against Pacific Fertility Center in San Francisco after a malfunctioning cryogenic tank destroyed roughly 3,500 eggs and embryos belonging to more than 100 patients. A jury later awarded $15 million to five families, attributing 90% of liability to the tank manufacturer and 10% to the clinic. That verdict was appealed and settled for an undisclosed amount.¹⁹

Around the same time, University Hospitals Fertility Center in Ohio faced a class action after a freezer malfunction damaged approximately 2,000 frozen eggs and embryos belonging to 700 patients. The resulting lawsuits settled out of court, reportedly in the millions, with patients signing nondisclosure agreements.¹⁹²⁰²¹

The Alabama Embryo Ruling

In February 2024, the Alabama Supreme Court held in LePage v. Center for Reproductive Medicine that frozen embryos qualify as “children” under Alabama’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act. The case arose after a hospital patient accessed a fertility clinic and destroyed stored embryos. The trial court dismissed the wrongful death claims, and the state’s highest court reversed, ruling the statute covers “all unborn children without exception based on developmental stage, physical location, or any other ancillary characteristics.”²²

Several Alabama IVF providers suspended treatments immediately, worried that creating and discarding embryos could now trigger wrongful death liability. The Alabama legislature enacted a law on March 6, 2024, granting civil and criminal immunity to IVF providers for the “death or damage” of an embryo. The statute did not disturb the court’s classification of embryos as children; it only shielded providers. Two clinics resumed services after the law passed; the clinics in the original case did not.²² At least 11 states have laws broadly defining fetal personhood, and 13 had active personhood bills under consideration as of 2024, raising the possibility that similar rulings elsewhere could change the liability landscape for standard IVF practices.²³

Why These Cases Keep Happening

A recurring theme in IVF litigation is the gap in oversight. Federal authority is fragmented. The FDA regulates drugs, devices, and donor tissue used in IVF. The Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments of 1988 cover diagnostic testing. The CDC, under the Fertility Clinic Success Rate and Certification Act of 1992, requires clinics to report procedure outcomes, which tracks success rates rather than safety incidents.²⁴ No federal or state agency specifically licenses embryology labs or mandates reporting of embryo mix-ups. The Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology accredits member clinics, but membership is voluntary. As one plaintiffs’ attorney put it, “the United States does not have meaningful fertility industry oversight.”⁹ The NAPGO study found specimen mix-ups accounted for more than 88% of non-catastrophic IVF incidents, usually caused by manual labeling systems, skipped audits, and staff workload.¹⁹

Federal fixes have been proposed. The Protect IVF Act, introduced in the Senate in June 2025, would establish a statutory right to receive and provide IVF, preempt inconsistent state laws, and let both the Attorney General and private individuals sue states that interfere with access, tying the standard of care to American Society for Reproductive Medicine guidelines.²⁵ Other bills would require insurance coverage or block state-level bans. None had become law as of mid-2026.²⁶ Until something changes, individual lawsuits remain the main vehicle for accountability.

1
Orlando Sentinel. Central Florida Couple Sues Fertility Clinic Because Baby Isn’t Genetically Theirs
2
ClickOrlando. Custody Agreement Reached for Florida Baby at Center of IVF Mix-Up
3
Global News. IVF Mix-Up Couple Tiffany Score Steven Mills Florida Fertility Clinic Embryo Biological Parents
4
People. Couple in IVF Embryo Mixup Reach Custody Agreement With Daughter’s Biological Parents
5
NBC News. Florida Biological Parents Baby IVF Embryo Identified
6
CBS Austin. New Lawsuit Alleges Florida Fertility Clinic Used Woman as Surrogate Without Consent
7
NBC News. IVF Clinic Accused of Embryo Mix-Up Closes Amid Legal and Financial Problems
8
ABC News. Georgia Woman Sues IVF Clinic After Giving Birth to Wrong Baby
9
WSAV. Coastal Fertility Specialists Sued Over IVF Mixup Custody Suit
10
The New York Times. Visiting Rights Denied in Embryo Mix-Up Case
11
FindLaw. Perry-Rogers v. Fasano
12
The Atlantic. IVF Embryo Mix-Up Parenthood
13
NBC News. Couple Says Fertility Clinic Mixed Their Embryos
14
FindLaw. Who Gets Custody When the Fertility Clinic Makes a Mistake
15
National Center for Biotechnology Information. Legal Case Analysis of IVF Malpractice
16
MDEdge. Embryo Mix-Up Debacles: Is There Liability
17
Enjuris. IVF Medical Malpractice Lawsuits
18
MDEdge OB/GYN. IVF Malpractice Litigation Review
19
NAPGO. Legal Case Study of Severe IVF Incidents Worldwide
20
NOLA.com. Ochsner In Vitro Fertilization Center Closed for Good
21
vLex. Hebert v. Ochsner Fertility Clinic, 102 So.3d 913
22
Arizona State University Center for Public Health Law and Policy. Memo on Alabama IVF Case
23
NPR. Fetal Personhood Alabama IVF
24
American Society for Reproductive Medicine. Oversight of IVF in the US
25
GovTrack. S. 2035 – Protect IVF Act
26
RESOLVE. In the Middle of the National Conversation Around IVF