Fertility Clinic Implanted Wrong Embryo, Woman Gave Birth To Another Couple's Baby

(CBS DETROIT/CNN) --A US couple is suing a fertility clinic, saying the company implanted their embryo into a different woman.

Anni and Ashot Manukyan wanted their daughter to have a younger sibling, so they used a fertility clinic to try to get pregnant using in vitro fertilization, or IVF.

In August 2018, the clinic transferred two of what were thought to be the Manukyans' embryos into Anni's uterus. They were devastated when the process did not result in a pregnancy.

But as they'd later learn, those were not even their embryos. They belonged to another couple, or perhaps couples -- they're not sure.

Instead, one of the Manukyan's embryos was thousands of miles away in the uterus of a Queens woman. And that woman gave birth on March 31 to the Manukyan's genetic son as well as another baby boy from a third couple, according to a lawsuit.

Now the Manukyans are suing the clinic, CHA Fertility, for the shocking IVF mixup that has "played with three families' lives," Anni Manukyan said on Wednesday.

"CHA robbed me of my ability to carry my own child, to be with him in the first couple moments of his life, to nurse him, to just do skin on skin contact. Just be a mom to him," she said.

Their lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, accuses CHA Fertility of medical malpractice, negligence and a bevy of other charges. An attorney for the couple, Adam Wolf, said Wednesday the three-family mixup was one of the worst fertility center tragedies in US history.

"The number of things that went wrong here is just plain staggering," he said.

The Manukyan's lawsuit comes days after the Queens couple, identified in court documents as A.P. and Y.Z., filed a similar lawsuit in federal court against CHA Fertility. The Queens mother, who is Asian, gave birth to two non-Asian babies, the lawsuit states, and DNA testing found that each child was a genetic match to a different couple who were also CHA Fertility clients.

The Queens couple was then forced to give up the babies to their genetic parents.

CHA Fertility has not responded to inquiries for comment.