Attorney: Dozens of Ovation Fertility Patients Believed to be Affected; Lack of IVF Industry Oversight Contributed to Tragedy.
LOS ANGELES – APRIL 18, 2024 – Ovation Fertility, one of the nation’s largest networks of fertility clinics, was hit by multiple lawsuits filed by former patients whose embryos were destroyed due to a critical error at the company’s Orange County branch. Adam Wolf, the patients’ lawyer and one of the country’s top IVF and fertility attorneys, held a press conference to discuss the new lawsuits and warn that dozens of additional Ovation Fertility patients may have been affected.
The lawsuits (complaint #1, complaint #2) were filed in California Superior Court in Orange County by Adam Wolf of the law firm Peiffer Wolf Carr Kane Conway & Wise (Peiffer Wolf).
Adam Wolf, partner at Peiffer Wolf, said: “This is a tragedy for dozens of would-be parents in Orange County. Some of the victims lost all their remaining embryos. To them, this is not about lost time, money and physical pain. Ovation robbed them of the chance to have biologically related children. To make matters worse, this disaster was completely preventable.”
Wolf urged current and former Ovation Fertility patients who underwent embryo transfers in January 2024 to contact the clinic about whether their embryos were affected. He also said that this is only the latest incident in a nationwide trend of fertility clinic misconduct and that the entire IVF industry remains virtually unregulated to this day.
Wolf continued: “Fertility clinic misconduct is not a local problem; we’ve handled similar cases virtually everywhere across the country. And there’s no end in sight to this kind of misconduct, as IVF continues to grow in popularity. We need meaningful regulation instituted nationally for this $27 billion industry.”
According to the lawsuits, in January 2024 at the Newport Beach (Orange County) branch of Ovation Fertility, a laboratory employee wrongly used hydrogen peroxide instead of a sterile solution in an incubator, effectively killing all of the embryos that were placed in the incubator. Ovation then transferred these dead embryos to its patients; none of the patients became pregnant.
During IVF, prior to transfer of a formerly frozen embryo, the embryo is placed into an incubator. It is crucial to maintain appropriate atmospheric conditions for the proper growth, development, and survival of the embryo. A properly cleaned and well-functioning incubator provides the necessary conditions for the continued viability of an embryo.
According to its website, Ovation Fertility is “one of the top five IVF service providers in the United States,” with 14 IVF labs across 10 states, including California, Texas, Nevada, Vermont, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee and Louisiana.
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MEDIA CONTACT:
Max Karlin at (703) 276-3255 or [email protected].
Peiffer Wolf Carr Kane Conway & Wise is a national law firm with offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Chicago, New Orleans, Cleveland, Youngstown, St. Louis and Detroit. Visit https://lostembryos.com/ for more information.
