Home > Research Legal Advice > Medical Malpractice > IVF failure due to doctors patient load and imporper care given during p...
Asked about 1 year ago - Fort Worth, TX
FlagTiming is very important in this process. It is also very very emotional for both the parents to be. My wife suffered more than you can guess and so did I. The biggest issue during this process but by no means the only one is the time from the trigger shot to the retrival of the eggs from her. This doctor saw she was in extreme and increasing pain prior to the procedure and it was delayed due to his stated patient load that day being higher than any of the nurses had ever seen him due in a day and we were basically in a line and he would get to us when he could. The retrieval was 2.5 hours late and my wife was over stemmed as well so most of her eggs liced or fell apart when they attemped to inject them. This has been told to us by a doctor that the issue was strictly due to delay.
Thankfully, your wife apparently did not suffer a serious physical injury as a result of her ordeal. However, without a serious physical injury, she probably does not have a medical malpractice claim under Texas law that would be economically feasible to pursue. Under Texas medical negligence law, mental or emotional suffering, no matter how severe, unaccompanied by a physical injury, is generally not compensable. There is a potential breach of contract claim here, but in such a claim the recoverable damages would be limited to out-of-pocket losses and expenses. Since those losses are presumably quite limited, again you would run into a serious problem in finding a lawyer who is willing to sink significant expense, time and effort into a case with a very limited, if any, money-producing capacity.
Although it is obviously not your primary concern, it occurs to me that you have lost the benefit of the bargain you made with the IVF clinic and/or the physician. My suggestion is that you write them a stern demand letter asking for a refund of whatever amount of money you paid them and threatening legal action if they fail or refuse to refund the money. You can do this without a lawyer and the worst-case result would be that they either refuse to pay or simply ignore you.
Good luck.
This will be tough to prove unless you can get another doctor who is an expert in IVF to testify against your doctor. Not many lawyers will take a case like this but you should consult with a medical malpractice lawyer- maybe two to get a feel for their thoughts. Med mal cases almost impossible- you can thank our "Tort Reform" friends who elected anti personal injury plaintiff legislators and judges. Now, doctors almost always win and the deck is stacked in their favor.
A failure of IVF is a tragedy for the family, but business as usual for IVF clinics. I have been practicing in the medical malpractice field for 37 years or so and I have never heard of a successful lawsuit against an IVF clinic where the allegation was a failed IVF procedure (there have been some succesful cases based on fraud or switched embryos). IVF practice is essentially an unregulated business and and the doctors are unaccountable for their failures. This is an injustice but it needs to be rectified through lesilation or regulation. The courts do not offer a remedy for what has happened to you.
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