Lawsuit over IVF mixup dropped
The California parents whose baby was inadvertently born to a Queens woman after embryos from three clients were mixed up at a fertility clinic have dismissed their lawsuit.
Anni and Ashot Manukyan filed paperwork this week dismissing their complaint against CHA Fertility Center Los Angeles with prejudice, meaning it can’t be filed again, the Daily News has learned.
The filing signals that the details of a tentative settlement reached in December have been accepted by all parties.
“All I’m allowed to say is that the matter has been resolved,” the Manukyans’ lawyer, Adam Wolf, said in a Friday statement to The News.
The couple first sued CHA in July after their baby was born March 31 to the Flushing woman alongside a baby from yet another couple.
The blunder flew under the radar until the Queens mom delivered the two boys and realized they didn’t match either her Korean-American heritage or the two female embryos she agreed to have implanted.
Speaking to The News last July, the Manukyans said they were forced to wage an agonizing court battle in New York to get custody of their newborn son because the Queens mom who delivered him through no fault of her own wanted to keep him.
“We had to fight for him, and she was fighting for him on the other end,” Anni told The News. “They were saying anything to keep him.”
Anni praised her New York lawyer, Eric Wrubel, for helping them win what she called a landmark custody case in a matter of weeks.
“He told us he’d never done anything like this before, but he promised to get our son, and he did,” she told The News. “In the end, genetics is genetics. He’s ours.”
Speaking at a press conference, Anni called it “tense and heartbreaking” to meet the Flushing woman.
“She raised my baby inside of her womb, you know, and she took care of him even after he was born, and I’m eternally grateful to her. She’s a lovely woman, and we were just all victims together, we’re not against each other, none of us,” she said.