Painful Consequences
In 1998 -- when Jennifer Rufer was a 25-year-old newlywed eager to become a mother -- she thought she had suffered a miscarriage, reports CBS News Correspondent Lee Cowan.
When she went to the University of Washington Medical Center, doctors administered one of the most widely used blood pregnancy tests in the country -- made by one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, Abbott Labs.
The test showed she had elevated levels of the hormone HCG. To her doctor, that meant one of two things. Either Rufer was pregnant, or she was in the early stages of a rare form of cancer. He performed the test 44 times all with the same result.
But there was a problem. The university claims Abbott Labs never told her doctor their test can sometimes give false results. And the doctor never tried a separate test until after he started treating Rufer for cancer.
She suffered through eight months of painful chemotherapy and six surgeries -- including one to remove part of a lung and a hysterectomy.
None of it appeared to work. So she and her husband began planning a funeral.
"My family thought I would die, and so did I,” Jennifer Rufer said.
But then a different test, done by a different doctor at Yale, revealed the unimaginable. Not only did that test come back negative, but it determined she may never have had cancer in the first place. A colossal mistake.
The jury blamed both the university and Abbot Labs equally, forcing them to split the $16.2 million judgement.
For the Rufers the nightmare was over.
The jury's verdict seemed to stun even the young plaintiff, who had already endured a lifetime of pain.
"I think they worked really hard and I'm really proud of them,” Rufer said of the jurors.
"The most important thing for me and for all of us is bringing what happened to me to the attention of the medical community and to the public, and I feel like that's been done,” Rufer said.
But the scars still remain, as does the fear it could happen to someone else.
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