A Florida woman who accused a Vermont doctor of impregnating her with his sperm rather than a donor was awarded US$5.25 million by a federal court jury on Wednesday.
The jury returned the verdict, a day after beginning deliberations, awarding Cheryl Rousseau $250,000 in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages from Dr. John Coates of Vermont. The Florida woman and her husband, Peter Rousseau, sued Coates in 2018, accusing him of using his sperm during an artificial insemination procedure in March 1977 at what was then called the Central Vermont Hospital in Berlin, Vermont, according to the complaint.
Coates’ attorney did not say if they planned to appeal the verdict.
“We were surprised and disappointed with the verdict,” Defense attorney Peter Joslin said in an email.
Last month, the Vermont Medical Practice Board permanently revoked Coates’ medical license. Coates, who practiced obstetrics and gynecology in the central Vermont area in the 1970s, is now retired.
Rousseau had wanted a child with her husband but he had a vasectomy that could not be reversed, according to the complaint.
Coates agreed to inseminate Cheryl Rousseau with donor material from an unnamed medical student, who resembled Rousseau’s husband and had characteristics that she required. Coates performed the artificial insemination but inserted his own genetic material instead, the lawsuit claimed.
The Rousseau lawsuit said they discovered what had happened when their now-grown daughter sought information about her biological father through DNA testing. The daughter determined Coates was her father, according to the lawsuit. Coates denied he was the father of the child, according to the lawsuit.
The couple sued Coates in U.S. District Court for the District of Vermont, accusing him of medical negligence, fraud, battery, and other offenses.
Celeste Laramie, an attorney for Cheryl Rousseau, said Coates testified under oath during his 2019 deposition that he never used his own sperm in any insemination. procedures. But once DNA confirmed he was the genetic father of Rousseau’s child, he admitted to using his own sperm.
The Rousseau lawsuit isn’t Coates’ only legal trouble. He faces a second lawsuit that was filed last year by a Colorado woman who also accuses Coates of using his genetic material when he artificially inseminated her in 1978.
Several lawsuits have cropped up over the past few years with the rise of DNA testing and genealogy technology that has exposed doctors performing artificial insemination procedures using their own sperm.
