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Failed vasectomy creates unexpected child, lawsuit
A "wrongful conception" lawsuit is headed to trial in Hennepin County after a Minnesota family says an unsuccessful vasectomy and negligent test readings resulted in the birth of an unexpected child.
EDINA, Minn. (FOX 9) - An unsuccessful vasectomy and a major mistake have led to a unique lawsuit headed for trial in Hennepin County next week.
Failed vasectomy, false results
The vasectomy didn’t take, but a nurse said it did.
So now, for possibly the first time ever, a Minnesota couple will take a "wrongful conception" argument to trial.
The boy born to Megan and Steven Szlachtowski in 2023 was conceived four years after Steven had a vasectomy at Minnesota Urology in Edina.
Negligence can't be explained
The company admits it was negligent when a nurse told him it was okay to stop using contraception because the vasectomy worked even though testing showed it did not.
The nurse died in 2022, before the pregnancy, so nobody knows how the error happened.
"The claim is based upon the damages caused by this procedure not being done properly," said legal analyst Mike Bryant, a managing partner in the firm Bradshaw & Bryant. "And in this case, the damages are what does it take to raise the child that arguably shouldn't be here based upon their negligence."
Unique to Minnesota
Minnesota is one of only a few states that allow medical malpractice suits in cases of "wrongful conception."
A 1977 state Supreme Court decision wrote that courts should balance the "aid, comfort, and society" — essentially, the joy of having a child — against the cost of having to raise a child you tried to prevent.
Cases rare, never to trial
The defense attorney for Minnesota Urology told FOX 9 he’s handled a handful of cases like this before, but never gone to trial.
Until now, he says parents always dropped their cases, sometimes for small settlements.
What are the damages?
The judge in this case has already ruled out some of the $6 million in punitive damages proposed by the Szlachtowskis because the mistake was not malicious.
But an expert estimated the cost of raising a child at up to $600,000 and a jury could add damages for physical pain, medical damages, or loss of economic opportunity.
The family said they had to scuttle lucrative career paths because of the unexpected child.
Careful with the jury
Bryant says the defense team will have to be careful about how they minimize the damage to the family now raising a surprise son.
"There are certain ways they can go that could completely turn a jury off because they'll be kind of offensive as far as how they'll explain why they could have done this, or they could have done that," Bryant said.
The plaintiffs side never returned messages left by FOX 9 on Wednesday, but we’ll hear from them when trial starts on Monday.