A major IVF clinic knowingly implanted dead embryos into expectant mothers in an attempt to cover up its fatal mistakes, a lawsuit claims.
Nine California couples allege that Ovation Fertility lab workers destroyed embryos with harmful cleaning chemicals during storage.
The lawsuit says the embryos would have died “instantly” when they were stored, and that the workers then knowingly implanted “these dead embryos into the expectant mothers.”
The clinic did so, according to the lawsuit, despite the risks of complications such as ectopic pregnancy, where the embryo implants in a fallopian tube instead of the uterus.
One couple, Brooke Berger and Bennet Hardy, now aged 37 and 33, said they were “heartbroken” after discovering that Ovation Fertility may have destroyed their last two embryos, which were their last hope of starting a family.
Brooke and Bennett entrusted Ovation Fertility with their last two embryos in their fifth round of IVF
The couple met almost 12 years ago while at school and have been married for four years.
‘I still have nerve pain from those injections, which takes months to go away. “My husband was rearranging his work so he could give me these medications,” Mrs. Berger said.
“When we found out there was no way this could have ended in a successful pregnancy, we were very disappointed and heartbroken,” Ms. Berger said.
“It was physically and emotionally devastating to know that after enduring all the injections, medications and painful and invasive procedures, it was all for nothing in the end,” he added.
‘It just feels very disrespectful. Not having recognition of guilt on their part, trying to silence us.
“It’s very disrespectful not to be treated as a priority because of that, to not convey any understanding of the harm they have caused, to us and to many other people.” “I’m surprised they treat us so badly.” Mrs. Berger.
‘Seer [my wife] “Going through all this physically and mentally and having this happen is really frustrating,” Mr Hardy said.
Ovation Fertility is a national IVF and storage treatment laboratory in Newport Beach that bills itself as one of the leading fertility laboratories in the US.
The company offers IVF, in which an egg is fertilized by sperm in a test tube and then the resulting embryo is inserted into a woman.
Ovation also offers “secure short- and long-term storage for frozen eggs, sperm, and embryos,” the website says.
A single IVF cycle, including genetic testing, is estimated to cost $25,000.
But the new lawsuit alleges that Ovation “hired inexperienced, cheap, unqualified and untrained employees to take shortcuts and maximize profits, at the expense of the health and safety of its patients and their embryos.”
The filing claims that a laboratory embryologist mistakenly used hydrogen peroxide or a similar cleaning agent instead of a sterile solution such as distilled water in the incubator storing frozen embryos.
The nine couples claim that Ovation used high-quality embryos that should have had a 75 percent or greater chance of success between January 18 and 30.
But the chances were zero percent because the clinic knowingly used nonviable embryos, according to the complaint, and none of the women became pregnant.
Berger and Hardy moved to Orange County, California, in July of last year, and sent the two remaining frozen embryos to their new doctor, who used Ovation Laboratories. It would be her fifth round of IVF.
Ms. Berger had already undergone months of hormone injections, as well as invasive and risky medical procedures to retrieve eggs and prepare them for implantation.
‘I still have nerve pain from those injections, which takes months to go away. “My husband was reorganizing his work so he could give me these medications,” he said.
Ovation Fertility is a national IVF and storage treatment laboratory in Newport Beach, offering “safe short- and long-term storage for frozen eggs, sperm, and embryos.”
“When we found out there was no way this could have ended in a successful pregnancy, we were very disappointed and heartbroken,” Ms. Berger said.
“And then all this time, we’re just trying to hold out hope that everything you’re doing is worth it, that you’re going to get something out of it in the end.”
The implantation procedure at Ovation was “uncomfortable,” Ms. Berger said.
‘They insert a catheter into your uterus, which is a very uncomfortable procedure, and then you supposedly wait for them to check to make sure the embryos are viable.
“There was a delay of several minutes just lying in this uncomfortable position, trying to breathe through that pain; they don’t give you any treatment for that.”
“Then they transfer it very quickly, you can see where [the embryos] enter the uterus on an ultrasound.
“The doctor said everything had gone very well, that they were in a good position and that he thought we had a good chance.”
“They did not know that their embryos were already dead due to Ovation’s wrongdoing,” the lawsuit says.
The couple then had an agonizing 12-day wait, hoping to finally see a positive pregnancy test that would never come.
“That week was really, really difficult,” Ms. Berger said. ‘You’re still taking the meds, you’re still up to date with everything.
‘Every twinge you feel in your body, you ask yourself, is this a sign that this is going well, if this is taking? Because it is in your own body, it is impossible to escape from it. You’re thinking about it all the time.
“It was physically and emotionally devastating to know that after enduring all the painful and invasive injections, medications and procedures, it was all for nothing in the end,” Ms. Berger said.
The filing claims that a laboratory embryologist mistakenly used hydrogen peroxide or a similar cleaning agent instead of a sterile solution such as distilled water in the incubator storing frozen embryos (file image).
“When you finally get that negative pregnancy test, it’s very difficult to deal with.”
Some of the other couples involved in the litigation even endured risky and painful medical procedures, such as hysteroscopies and biopsies, to determine if something went wrong on their part.
A hysteroscopy involves a surgeon looking inside the uterus through a camera connected to a tube to diagnose and treat abnormalities, while a biopsy involves analyzing a sample of tissue from the lining of the uterus.
The couples only began to discover that something suspicious had happened after several of the couple’s fertility doctors questioned why there was a 100 percent failure rate for embryos that had been thawed during that two-week period, when the success rate was typically over 75 percent. .
Another married couple, named only as TS and KS in the complaint, began their IVF journey in 2023.
Only two of the 12 eggs recovered were successfully fertilized and considered implantable.
‘We were hopeful, very hopeful, as we had a very high-grade, high-quality female embryo, as well as a low-grade, low-quality male embryo. We took advantage of our best opportunities and transferred our daughter, named Kalani Noelle, on January 29, 2024. She was destined to complete our family,” the couple said.
But unfortunately they never got pregnant. “Our hearts are broken and we will always mourn the loss of our female embryo,” they said.
Now Ovation has been bombarding Ms. Berger with phone calls to try to “sweep the matter under the rug, attempting to trick patients into signing claim waivers and non-disparagement agreements,” the suit says.
‘This whole process of them trying to contact us… it’s so transactional. There has been no apology or direct response.
‘We shouldn’t have to file this lawsuit to find out what happened to our embryos. It’s just not right,” Hardy said.
Berger and Hardy are still desperate to become parents and plan to try another cycle of ovarian stimulation.
‘If we want to move forward, we will have to go through a completely different stimulation cycle, which involves even more medications, monitoring and more procedures. “It is much more intense and there is no guarantee that we will obtain more viable embryos from that process,” he stated.
“I’m almost three years older than when we first recovered these embryos, and the odds don’t improve with age.”
Ms Berger said: “We want to make sure Ovation is held accountable… and that this doesn’t happen again to other couples who are trying to grow their families.”
Hardy said: “It’s heartbreaking and frustrating to think about all the effort we put in and how my wife sacrificed her body physically and mentally in this grueling process.”
Attorney Robert Marcereau, of Marcereau Law Group, said: ‘Ovation Fertility betrayed the trust of these people in their most vulnerable moments.’
Attorney Michelle Hemesath, of Ikuta Hemesath LLP, said: ‘Ovation Fertility promoted his supposed expertise to the general public when his operations were plagued by incompetence, as the lawsuit alleges.
Ovation Fertility has been named in other demands in the past.