(CN) — A 38-year-old woman from Savannah, Georgia, who became pregnant through in vitro fertilization, filed a lawsuit Tuesday against a clinic for implanting the wrong embryo in her uterus.
In the complaint, Krystena Murray said that when she delivered her child on Dec. 29, 2023, “it was readily apparent” that someone else’s embryo had been transferred to her. Murray is white and chose a white, blonde-haired and blue-eyed sperm donor, yet gave birth to a Black boy.
“Instead of excitement or joy, the day of her child’s birth was dominated by confusion and fear,” she wrote in the suit.
Despite the shock and concern, Murray insisted that the child’s race was not an issue for her and that she loved the healthy-born child regardless and wanted to keep it.
For over five months, Murray bonded with her son and breastfed her baby. But she said in her suit that she did not post photos of him online and was reluctant to show him off to her friends and family to avoid questioning and speculation.
Murray soon performed an at-home DNA test to confirm what she already suspected — that the baby was not biologically related to her. She then alerted the clinic of their apparent mistake so they could inform the couple that had actually created the child — referred to in the lawsuit as only the Stranger Couple — of what had happened.
The baby’s biological mother, who lives in South Carolina, then sued Murray for full custody of the baby. Murray agreed to hand over the child that she said she had no legal right to keep.
“As a result of that lawsuit, Ms. Murray’s baby was ripped away from her,” she wrote in her complaint.
In her lawsuit, Murray accuses Coastal Fertility Specialists, a South Carolina-based company with a clinic in southern Georgia, of failing to safeguard her frozen embryos, recklessly losing them and negligently implanting the wrong one inside her.
Murray, who spent two years trying to conceive, says she relied on false assertions from the clinic that its services were safe. She called it “an expensive and arduous process” that consisted of daily injections to stimulate egg production and several months of appointments and tests.
After the eggs were retrieved and fertilized, one embryo was transferred in May 2023, and soon after, Murray learned she was pregnant.
The company’s physicians are also accused of committing civil battery by transferring an embryo into Murray’s body that she did not consent to receiving. She seeks over $75,000, plus treble damages, punitive damages, attorney fees, and other relief.
Murray is represented by Peiffer Wolf Carr Kane Conway & Wise, a national law firm that has represented more than 1,000 people across the country in cases against fertility clinics over destroyed or lost embryos, IVF mix-ups, and other errors involving reproductive materials.
“To this day, Ms. Murray does not know if Coastal Fertility transferred to yet another couple an embryo that belonged to Ms. Murray and that should have been transferred to her. She does not know if her biologically related child is being raised by anyone else,” Murray wrote in the suit.
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“The birth of my child was supposed to be the happiest moment of my life, and honestly, it was,” Murray said in an online Tuesday news conference during which she and her attorneys announced the suit. “But it was also the scariest moment of my life.”
Full Story: Courthouse News February 18 2025
