Consumer genetic testing services have revealed many such cases, which no doubt have resulted in some lawsuits, but Suprynowicz v. Tohan 1/14/2025) is the first one I’ve seen reported. In this case, the Connecticut Supreme Court held that the adult children’s suit against the doctor – which was for ordinary negligence, not medical malpractice – was not a claim for wrongful life, which Connecticut does not recognize. Here is the court’s introductory statement of the facts and the legal issue:
The plaintiffs, Kayla Suprynowicz and Reilly Flaherty, who were strangers for most of their lives, discovered through the genetic testing company 23andMe that they are half siblings. They allege in this action that their biological father is the defendant, Narendra B. Tohan, the reproductive endocrinologist who assisted the plaintiffs’ parents in the parents’ efforts to conceive children. The plaintiffs claim that, in treating their parents’ infertility, the defendant utilized his own sperm rather than the sperm of the men they believed to be their fathers to impregnate their mothers, [which negatively impacted their familial relations and caused them physical harm and mental anguish.] Although the plaintiffs’ causes of action were labeled in the complaint as ordinary negligence claims, the defendant moved to strike them on the ground that they were noncognizable wrongful life claims. The trial court agreed and granted the motion to strike the plaintiffs’ complaint.
The dispositive issue in this appeal is whether the trial court correctly determined that the plaintiffs’ negligence claims sounded in wrongful life rather than ordinary negligence. We conclude that the answer to that question is no . . . .
In the court opinion below, the defendant argued that the action was really for medical malpractice, not ordinary negligence, and therefore should be dismissed because the plaintiffs had not complied with the requirements of Connecticut’s medical malpractice statute. The trial judge rejected this contention with no explanation, and the supreme court agreed, also with no explanation. I confess that I’m puzzled by this. Perhaps the reason is so obvious that I can’t see it.
In its discussion of wrongful life, the court quotes liberally from a recent case, Lynch v. State, 348 Conn. 478, 308 A.3d 1 (2024), and many other cases from both Connecticut and other state supreme courts. To avoid confusion, I have omitted citations and internal quotation marks in the following excerpts from the court’s opinion.
[T]here are two distinct characteristics of a wrongful life claim. First, the defendant is not directly responsible for the injury to the child. Cases that bear the “wrongful life” label typically involve a child who has a congenital abnormality born to a mother who would not have proceeded with the pregnancy had she received timely notice of that condition. . . . The alleged negligence is the failure to detect and educate the parents regarding the congenital abnormality in time for an abortion to be performed. Indeed, it has been said that the hallmark of a wrongful life case is that the defendant bears no direct responsibility for the child’s condition, and courts have relied in part on that fact in declining to recognize such claims.
A second characteristic of a wrongful life claim is the inherent difficulty of measuring damages. The basic rule of tort compensation is that the plaintiff be put in the position that he would have been in without the defendant’s negligence. In the wrongful life context, that position is nonexistence. Thus, the cause of action involves a calculation of damages dependent upon the relative benefits of an impaired life as opposed to no life at all, a comparison many courts have concluded the law is not equipped to make. . . .
[I]n the present case, the plaintiffs’ claims differ fundamentally from wrongful life claims. Unlike wrongful life claims, in which the defendant bears no direct responsibility for the child’s condition, in this case the defendant is alleged to be responsible for both the pregnancies and the alleged harm. The plaintiffs allege that the defendant’s unauthorized use of his own sperm to impregnate their mothers directly caused the harm of which they complain. This is not a case in which the alleged injury is a condition for which the defendant bears no direct responsibility. To the contrary, it is the plaintiffs’ contention that the defendant’s deception is directly responsible for the mental anguish, physical injury and compromised familial relations they have suffered.
Moreover, a calculation of damages does not require a comparison between life in an impaired state and no life at all. The plaintiffs do not claim that the defendant’s alleged negligence prevented their mothers from terminating their pregnancies, or that the plaintiffs would have been better off had they never been born. That is, the plaintiffs are not asking to be ‘‘made whole’’ by being restored to a state of nonbeing; rather, they are seeking compensation for injuries and losses that they claim could have been prevented or substantially mitigated if the defendant had acted with due care. The plaintiffs’ injuries, in other words, were directly and proximately caused by the defendant’s misconduct. In short, the present case bears none of the hallmarks of a wrongful life claim and is properly understood and can be properly adjudicated within the context of ordinary negligence claims.
