Photo: Peiffer Wolf Carr Kane Conway & Wise Law Firm
An Ohio family has filed a lawsuit against a fertility doctor and hospital after learning that their daughter is not related to her father. In 2020, Jeanine and John "Mike" Harvey gave their daughter Jessica a DNA test kit from ancestry.com for Christmas.
When they received the results several weeks later, they were shocked to learn that Jessica was not biologically related to her father.
"We got the results and logged on. There's Irish, English, German, Welsh, French, all these things. And there's no Italian Sicilian. I mean nothing," Jessica recalled on Good Morning America.
The family says that Jessica was conceived with the help of IVF treatments in 1991. They sought treatment from Dr. Nicholas J. Spirtos at Summa Health System's Akron Campus in Ohio.
The Harveys continued to do some genealogical research and discovered that Jessica's true father was also a patient of Dr. Spiritos.
After learning the truth, the family filed a medical malpractice lawsuit against Dr. Spiritos and Summa Health Systems for allegedly using the wrong sperm samples to impregnate Jeanine.
"For us, and for countless unsuspecting families out there, it took just one Christmas gift – a home DNA test kit – to change our lives forever. It revealed a trauma that I never could have imagined. It's taken every ounce of my power to remain strong for myself and my family as we try to move forward," Jeanine said in a statement.