Victims of fertility clinic embryo fraud join forces for compensation claim
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Britain's biggest IVF compensation claim is being prepared by lawyers representing patients who allege that blunders at a fertility clinic and NHS hospital have ended their chances of conceiving children.
The group action by 75 men and women centres on lost or destroyed embryos and sperm samples. The case follows the conviction at Southampton Crown Court last month of Paul Fielding, an embryologist who tricked women into believing they were having embryos implanted.
Fielding, who worked at the NHS-run North Hampshire fertility centre and the private Hampshire Clinic, also falsified records and is suspected of tampering with samples. He will be sentenced on Wednesday for assault and false accounting after he allowed eight childless women to have fake embryos implanted.
The compensation claimants also include men who had stored their sperm samples with the clinic after being diagnosed as suffering from cancer. Doctors had advised them that radiation treatment or chemotherapy could destroy their sperm.
Ann Bevan, the solicitor leading the action against the clinic and the hospital, said senior barristers were drawing up the final amount for the claim, which is estimated to run into millions of pounds.
"The claims vary greatly with the most serious being those claimants who have lost their semen and their chance of fertility in the future," she said. She will meet the insurance company representing the private clinic and NHS solicitors acting for the hospital later this month to try to agree compensation.
"If that doesn't happen and there is a risk that our clients might be short-changed, we will issue legal proceedings almost immediately," said Ms Bevan, who works for the City law firm Penningtons. Legal papers already drawn up by the lawyers allege breach of contract. Ms Bevan said a negligence claim against the clinic and the hospital would be more difficult to prove.
Ms Bevan and some of the victims of Fielding's crime were in court on 11 December to hear the judge describe how Fielding had betrayed the trust of couples he was supposedly helping to have children."The conviction does strengthen our case but it does not change our position and we are not relying on it," Ms Bevan said.
After the jury delivered its verdict, Judge Boggis told Fielding: "Your crimes are despicable and you face a custodial sentence."
The court heard that Fielding, 44, from Whitchurch, Hampshire, who earned £49,000 a year, had huge debts from loans and DIY on his house. To help to pay them off, he began a fraud whereby a gynaecologist placed what he thought were thawed embryos in the patients' wombs. For this, Fielding was paid £50 a time. He then falsified records at the clinic to cover his scam.
Three victims of the fraud were injured, suffering pain, bleeding and bruising due to the "futile and invasive" procedure.
After the verdict the woman whose missing embryos exposed the scam spoke about her and her husband's anguish. Lisa Butlin, 36, from Chichester, said: "Fielding robbed us of the chance of ever having a child of our own. I'll never know what happened to my babies – that's what they were to me."