Please provide a cite that $50k is the minimum threshold for a lawsuit in Ohio, and that she expecting or alleging damages less than that.
One, as has been pointed out several times, she has already gotten compensation. Two, no one is saying the sperm bank didn’t make a mistake, or that they should just be able to sent out whatever they want. We are saying that mistake is not aggravated because the wrong sperm came from a Black guy, or because this woman feels uncomfortable going into a Black salon. Now you may argue she is entitled to compensation above and beyond that amount, but if your basis for that complaint stems from the fact that the child is biracial, many people will view that as problematic.
No, that should be the issue, but it’s not the crux of the issue based on the complaint. You are right that such a mistake is enough in it’s own right. The problem is that that is not why she is alleging damages, and likely not primarily why she is suing given she waited 2 years to do so.
Really? Does a McDonald’s that screws up an order have to be sued in order to stop them from making future mistakes? Common sense should prevail here. This was by all accounts a MISTAKE. Pretty much every company endeavors to prevent mistakes from happening for a number of reasons including preserving their reputation, enhancing their ability to gain future business, common decency, and greed. Not every mistake must come with a huge settlement in order to encourage better business practices.
Yeah, we’re not dealing with merchandise. We’re dealing with a human life. Life isn’t comparable to granite tiles and fast food menus. Our genetics just don’t work like that. People should not be trashed (figuratively or literally) just because their color turned out too dark for someone else’s personal taste.
I think the company screwed up and owed the mother a refund. If I were the company, I would have offered her extra on top of that to further smooth things over. But I don’t think they were legally obligated to make this gesture, and I don’t think the donor being black makes them extra obligated either.
I don’t think this is a legitimate case of “wrongful birth”. She chose to carry the kid to term even after being informed of the screw up, and then waited 2 years to complain. Furthermore, I find their kitchen sink approach ethically distasteful, because I believe they are trying to make money by appealing to the same ole racist fears and assumptions that have plagued this country from the onset. We aren’t going to ever get to a post-racial America if we indulge people with racial hang ups and treat them as if they have a valid reason for holding on to their racial hang ups.
If the couple had sued for malpractice and didn’t throw their daughter under the bus using her race, I honestly would have little to say about their actions.
Economic damages are quantifiable, pretty much by definition. Non-economic damages (pain and suffering, for our purposes) are almost never quantifiable. How much is a sore thumb worth? The best we can do is see how much juries have awarded in similar cases, but of course that is just an aggregate of subjective figures.
Wrong. Maybe you can argue it became toxic to her, but the town itself didn’t change because she had a biracial kid.
Why should the sperm bank suffer because people are racist? More importantly, why should this lady get consideration and sympathy when she was perfectly fine living with racists until she started to be affected by it?
Who said se shouldn’t be able to sue them? The point is that she should not be able to collect damages because her child is Black.
Yes, completely irrelevant to the lawsuit.
She didn’t HAVE to move.
Which is completely admirable. The issue is that she decided to sue based on transparently racist grounds. If she sued because of a basic breach of contract, not mentioning the horror of having to go to a Black salon or never having met a Black person until college, we wouldn’t be debating this at all. The problem stems from the fact that she seems to think she was made worse off because her daughter is biracial, and that fact warrants specific compensation.
Which is mostly correct and also not what you intimated and directly stated in your previous post when you said “‘Quantifiability’ is not an element”. Clearly it is an element of the lawsuit. Plus, both general and specific damages are often quantifiable based on a few models.
No one is trashing anyone here. No one is faulting the kid because of her skin color. It’s a matter of them living somewhere where their kid is going to have a bad time growing up in and she needs to move. The sperm bank is at fault for this any which way you look at it.
What if she is anti-abortion ? lol Again, you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
I wouldn’t say she ‘waited’ 2 yrs. It’s more like, her child is starting to grow and her looks changed and she probably started seeing and realizing how the place was going to affect her in the future.
But it isn’t about fears. It’s about reality … her kid is not going to be raised properly in that town and it’s because of her race … why run away from the reason ? … … the whole basis of this case is about the race issue … how is she not going to bring it up ?
Even if coming up with a figure is based on some subjectivity, there needs to be some evidence that the plaintiff actually has, for instance, a sore thumb. Has the sore thumb been so persistent and strong that a person routinely has to seek medical care and use pain meds? Can the person no longer work or enjoy their hobbies because of this pain? What is the paper trail showing they actually even have a sore thumb? Or are we supposed to just take the plaintiff at their word that they have a sore thumb because…black people. Give me $50K.
Apologies for getting your name wrong, and also thanks for providing the name of the sperm bank. It’s not on the list of sperm banks accepted by UK clinics (there isn’t enough available in the UK), but that could be for any number of reasons. Still, good to know it’s not our clinic.
Another poster provided a link to the 50,000 dollar question above. You’ve responded to that a couple of times without doubting them, so it’s a little odd that you’re now doubting me.
I still don’t understand why you think that simple refund of costs would be enough to stop the clinic doing this again. There just aren’t that many sperm donor clinics out there - it’s not a competetive market - so bad publicity is not enough.
IMO the best outcome would be for the clinic to be forced to check all their previous orders, put stricter checks in place and pay compensation to the woman for not fulfilling the contract, above and beyond the actual refund (IUI isn’t free, quite apart from the claimed costs in having an unexpected biracial baby). I’m not sure if the state the clinic is in has the ability to do anything other than make them pay money; a quick Google hasn’t enlightened me. If they don’t, then making them pay money will make them put extra checks in place.
Otherwise, like I said, they could just send out any random sperm. That includes low motility sperm that will greatly reduce the chances of pregnancy. Why give the clinic a get-out for this? Why make this the only occasion where a company is allowed to break a contract and not lose out?
I think the quote you are referencing is this one:
There are a few issues here:
Even assuming that is the minimum threshold for the specific court (which I would like a cite on anyway), that doesn’t mean she unable to sue for less money generally speaking.
I doubt her lawyer would admit his/her client were seeking less than $50k or alleging damages less than the minimum threshold the court set for a variety of reasons including that he/her is basically admitting to circumventing the law.
I think if she were truly seeking less than $50k, most businesses would have settled because the cost of defense may very well exceed that amount even putting aside the reputational damage.
In short, I think the lawyer was hoping for a big payday, and now he/she is backtracking.
Huh? I know it won’t affect you being in the UK, but would you even think of using this place after hearing this story (assuming it’s true)? Besides, in the states, there seems to be a decent amount of competition based on a Google search. In DC, there are at least 7 providers for around 650k people. And there are plenty more in the metro area.
But why would they do that? Why would they just, “send out any random sperm” when they didn’t do that before, and when it doesn’t behove the in any sense to do so? Please remember that this was an honest mistake by all counts. No one is alleging they sent out any random sample, but rather that they sent out the wrong sample once. Sending out any random sample saves almost no money, and would be expensive in the long run as people will demand refunds, sue, etc. Furthermore, it is just not that easy to find completely immoral people willing to engage in such a ethical breach for almost no gain.
They are in business to make money at the very least, and continually dissatisfying your customers doesn’t help with that pursuit. Yes, punitive damages can help when there is gross negligent or severe repercussions for a given mistake, but the market does pretty well to weed out people with no desire to serve their customers.
I’m just going by what she’s saying. According to her, through whatever she has seen or experienced(we don’t know all her experiences), she concluded that this place won’t work for her kid … We can only go by that … unless we’re saying that she may be exaggerating or making things up ? … I’ll concede that is a possibility …
no … my focus is solely on the sperm bank … I’m not even thinking about her giving her up for adoption or anything like that … if they lived in a diverse place then I would call this lawsuit for what it is, a sham … but if her claims are true, she has a legitimate concern about the well being of her kid and that concern came about because the sperm bank made a mistake … she should be able to go after compensation if she chooses to … not to mention that holding them accountable may force them to be more thorough with their procedures
You think the court should just take her at her word and give her money solely based on her claims, no matter how extreme? I find it interesting that folks in this thread have discarded their normal skepticism, seemingly overlooking the fact that she has a big financial incentive to stretch the truth.
Imagine a black person saying that because they’d been raised in a predominately white town and endured well-meaning but awkward conversations, they thought their hometown was inhospitable and not conducive for a healthy upbringing. In my experience, when a black person wants sympathy for racism, they better be talking about the KKK and the “n-word”. They’d be called a racist if they implied that because a town is all-white, that its unfit to live there. There is no reason not apply the same standard to this woman.
They would have a concern if the kid was white, too. They can’t pin this on the sperm bank. Two lesbians raising a child without the benefits of SSM, in a town that lacks diversity and barely tolerates homosexuality. It’s not race that is affecting their well-being. I don’t know why this isn’t more obvious to yall.
Then you are wrong. Clearly, damages being quantifiable is a crucial element of a lawsuit. Even things like pain and suffering are quantified in terms of dollars in many cases using methods like the per diem method and multiplier method.
You seem to be using element in a lay sense. I am not. And both the multiplier method and the per diem method are inherently subjective. Neither bears any mathematical relationship to pain and suffering; they are legal fictions.
Fair enough, but you are not (apparently) disputing that this plaintiff has the metaphorical sore thumb. You are disputing whether that pain is causally linked to the sperm bank’s error. That’s not really related to whether her damages are quantifiable.
I’m not disputing causality. I’m saying it’s not enough for her to just say the child’s blackness has caused her pain and suffering. She has to show that it has. I have to wonder why you’re treating this like a trifle little nothing. Can you point to any cases where a person has been able to use something as vague as fielding “uncomfortable conversations” as the basis for damages?
Even if you are, special damages would be based on quantifiable real losses.
Subjective doesn’t imply something is not quantifiable. Is the US debt quantifiable? Yes, but not everyone will agree on the number because the defintions are subjective. That doesn’t mean it’s unable to be measured or counted in an agreed upon measurement (eg. dollars).
If you sued someone because you had a sore thumb, they would ask you so specify in dollars the amount you spent or were prevented from earning as a result of that injury. They would ask you to provide some proof of the actions you took in order to quantify the damage. Just saying it really hurt isn’t enough.
I’m wincing at the imagery that suddenly came to mind. One way she can prove her relationship with her family has been harmed is to have a family member get on the witness stand and testify about how uncomfortable he feels when in the presence of his black grandchild, niece, cousin,etc…and that this discomfort has caused tensions betwen him and the plaintiff.
Argh. Let’s hope that by the time this little girl is an adult, all of this has disappeared from the internet’s memory.
I can imagine this too. And if this happens, let’s hope the witness is then cross-examined by a black attorney, in front of a black judge, with a whole bunch of black people sitting in the audience. That’ll make the discomfort show, all right.
But it does beg the question. How much money is a relationship like that really worth, if it can be strained by something so petty?
I can imagine her calling a resident psychiatrist from of an adoption agency to explain the intricacies of being the only (pick your race) among (pick your race) growing up.
Then an explanation would be given as to how they match child and parent up starting with the choice to have a child that closely matches the parent’s characteristics.
The process of adoption or sperm donor is not a wheel of fortune where people randomly spin and take whatever comes up. It’s a serious process and the donor bank fucked it up.