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Originally Posted by AXOmom
MysticCat - The print version of this article was either more thorough, or I couldn't get the entire online version to come up - not sure which, but in the print version, the parents did say, they would have terminated the pregnancy if they had known.
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The online version did too. It's just that as you said, news articles can't cover everything, and I've had enough experience of reading articles about my own cases and scratching my head, saying "that's not what this case is about." I've learned not to rely on a news source (unless it's somebody I know knows what they're talking about, like Nina Totenberg) to know what the claims in a case are.
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I have a legal question for you - In medical malpractice I have assumed the law normally differentiates between understandable mistakes - i.e. the idea that no doctor, nurse or lab is going to be 100% correct, sloppy mistakes that should not be made, and reprehensible mistakes where it was obvious something bad would happen (i.e. doctor operating while intoxicated)- a negligent homicide situation. In this case it seems like this lawsuit was the first situation - the lab isn't going to be 100% correct all the time. Because of that it's hard for me to see how they won this suit other than the jury felt sorry for their situation (which I would as well, but we aren't supposed to make legal decisions that way). Am I missing a legal point here or misunderstanding the situation in some way?
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This isn't my area of practice, so another lawyer or one of the doctors here can probably answer this better than I, but I think the standard is whether the doctor failed to follow generally accepted standards of care. I understand AOII Angel to say this would fit that bill.
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Originally Posted by AOII Angel
Um...that's clearly malpractice. If you have a chromosomal test for Down Syndrome that is negative, and you have a child with Down Syndrome, some one made a major mistake. That's not a little whoops. That's a gotta get it right 100% of the time kinda test.
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And since this is clearly malpractice, that's why I think the Arizona bill doesn't go as far as some would claim.
I think "wrongful birth" is sometimes used to cover a variety of kinds of claims. It seems that the Arizona bill limits itself to very specific claim of "but for I would have terminated," but leaves open the avenue of malpractice claims.