A Florida woman has been awarded $5.25 million in damages after a Vermont fertility doctor used his own sperm to impregnate her back in the 1970s.
Cheryl Rousseau and her husband filed a lawsuit against Montpelier-based Dr. John Boyd Coates, III in 2018 after a home DNA test kit pointed to the doctor as her daughter's biological father.
The Rousseaus claim they signed a contract with Dr. Coates in 1977 for him to artificially inseminate Cheryl using donated semen from an unnamed medical student who resembled her husband, WCAX-TV reported. Had the couple known the doctor was going to use his own genetic material for the insemination, they never would have agreed to the procedure, according to the lawsuit. That December, Cheryl Rousseau gave birth to a girl.
Four decades later, the daughter wanted to learn more about her genetic background so she reportedly turned to websites Ancestry.com and 23andme. The results from those sites indicated that Coates was the sperm donor, the lawsuit states.
If their daughter never took the genetic tests, the Rousseaus say they never would have known that Coates used his own sperm during the procedure.
On Wednesday, a federal court jury awarded Cheryl Rousseau $250,000 in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages, CBS News reported.
"The jury through its punitive damages verdict sent a message to any physicians who might think about lying to their patients or using their own semen to inseminate their patients," attorney Celeste Laramie told CBS. "Such behavior will have serious consequences."
An attorney for Coates told the outlet that the doctor was "surprised and disappointed" by the verdict.
Meantime, Coates is being sued by a second woman for "fraudulent insemination." In a lawsuit filed last year, a Colorado woman claims the doctor used his own sperm when he artificially inseminated her in 1978. Her claims are nearly identical to the Rousseaus: Coates agreed to use sperm from an unnamed medical student who resembled her husband, and she only recently discovered that he used his own genetic material when her now-adult daughter took a home DNA test to learn more about her background. That lawsuit is pending.
Coates, now 80 and retired, had his medical license permanently revoked by the Vermont Board of Medical Practice last month.
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