LOS ANGELES (CN) - A nurse nearly wrecked a couple's marriage by telling them, in the delivery room, that the husband was not the father of the baby - but the nurse was wrong, the couple claims in court.
Cathleen Clarke sued Huntington Memorial Hospital, of Pasadena, in Superior Court.
Clarke says she gave birth on April 27, 2011, but a hospital nurse spoiled the joyous occasion by entering the delivery room and telling her and her husband that blood tests showed he was not the baby's father.
The "nurse knew or should have known that the information communicated to plaintiff was not true," Clarke says in the lawsuit.
Clarks says she was artificially inseminated, and, no thanks to the nurse, she and her husband concluded that her doctor must have inseminated her with another man's sperm.
That was before tests in March 2012 confirmed that her husband was the child's father, Clarke says.
In the intervening year, the nurse's mistake created "tension and hostility" in their marriage and they entered into divorce proceedings, Clarke says.
"As a result of the statements of the nurse, plaintiff and her husband underwent counseling and expended money in reliance on the statements and misrepresentations. Plaintiff also suffered extreme emotional distress as a result of the statements by the nurse and being of the belief that her husband may not have been the father of the child," the lawsuit states.
Clarke seeks general and special damages for negligent infliction of emotional distress and loss of consortium.
She is represented by Richard Meaglia of Monrovia.
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