$50 Million Verdict for Parents Whose Prenatal Genetic Test Missed the One Defect It Was Ordered to Find
After trial: Valley Medical Center settled during the appeal; the Washington Court of Appeals affirmed the verdict against LabCorp in August 2015 and review was denied in 2016.
A King County jury awarded $50 million to Rhea and Brock Wuth after Valley Medical Center failed to send LabCorp the family genetic report needed to screen for a known chromosome translocation and LabCorp ran only a routine karyotype without asking for it, leaving the couple's son to be born with the unbalanced translocation the testing was meant to detect. The verdict was affirmed on appeal in 2015.
What happened
Brock Wuth knew something ran in his family. A cousin lived with profound disabilities, and when geneticists finally traced the cause, they found an unbalanced translocation between chromosomes 2 and 9. Testing across the extended family showed Brock carried a balanced form of the same translocation: harmless to him, but with a 50 percent chance that any child he conceived would inherit an unbalanced version.
Brock and Rhea Wuth wanted more children, and they were clear from the start that they would not carry a pregnancy with the unbalanced translocation to term. They brought the genetics report mapping the exact breakpoints on Brock's chromosomes to every pregnancy appointment. Between 2003 and 2008, Rhea miscarried six times.
In late 2007 a pregnancy held. Rhea's obstetrician scheduled chorionic villus sampling at Valley Medical Center in Renton and faxed the report ahead. The appointment fell on New Year's Eve, a day no genetic counselor was working at the clinic. The sampling itself went fine. What followed did not. A medical assistant filled out the lab requisition, but the report identifying Brock's specific translocation was never attached, and the box ordering the more sensitive FISH analysis was never checked. Only a routine karyotype was requested.
At LabCorp, a technician still in training analyzed the fetal karyotype alone, without reading the indication noted on the requisition, so he did not know he was supposed to be looking for a translocation. No one at the lab called Valley or the Wuths to ask for the missing family report, and no second analyst checked his work, even though LabCorp's own expert testified that its policies required that supervision. The lab reported a normal male karyotype. Valley's genetic counselor phoned Rhea to say the results were normal and that the fetus did not carry the translocation.
The couple's son was born in 2008 with the unbalanced translocation the testing was meant to find. He has severe physical and cognitive disabilities and will need care for the rest of his life.
Todd Gardner of Swanson Gardner Meyers Cohon PLLC tried the family's claims in King County Superior Court: wrongful birth on behalf of the parents and wrongful life on behalf of their son. In December 2013 the jury returned a $50 million verdict, $25 million to Brock and Rhea and $25 million for their son's lifetime of care. It found Valley Medical Center and LabCorp each 50 percent at fault and found the physician who performed the sampling procedure not liable.
Both institutions appealed. Valley reached a settlement with the family while the appeal was pending and dismissed its case. LabCorp pressed on, challenging the trial court's evidentiary rulings, the handling of jury selection, and the size of the award. On August 24, 2015, Division One of the Washington Court of Appeals rejected every argument and affirmed the full verdict in a published opinion, Wuth v. Laboratory Corp. of America, 189 Wn. App. 660. The Washington Supreme Court declined to review the case in 2016.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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