Embryo donors sue Monash IVF for unresolved grief after wrong baby bungle
A Western Australian couple who donated their frozen embryos so a Queensland woman could have a baby said they were left with psychiatric injury and distress after discovering in vitro fertilization meant the child was not theirs.
Details of the shocking embryo mix-up in Brisbane have been revealed in a High Court decision brought against Monash IVF by donors who were left out of a multimillion-dollar secret settlement reached with other families involved.
The negligence claim follows revelations that an error at Monash IVF’s Brisbane clinic in February 2025 – allegedly on the clinic’s first day of operation, according to court documents – led to the Queensland woman giving birth to a stranger’s baby.
This imprint has chosen not to identify the families involved in order to respect their privacy and protect the children involved.
Court documents say the WA couple had a child through in vitro fertilization in 2018, then became pregnant naturally and had a daughter in 2020.
The couple decided to donate their remaining four frozen embryos to a suitable couple to parent them, and were introduced to a couple in September 2022 through a Facebook group set up to match potential donors with families in need.
The statement of claim says both couples underwent a counseling session organized by Monash IVF in January 2023 to ensure they understood the donation process, and the WA donors later consented to their embryos being used by the Brisbane mother and father.
The article alleges that Monash IVF then organized to transport, store, thaw and transfer the frozen embryos to its client in Brisbane.
The Queensland couple later successfully had a baby using Monash IVF, which the WA couple believed was biologically theirs.
The embryo donors said the Brisbane recipients contacted them on February 20, 2025, to say there had been a mix-up and the baby was not theirs.
Monash’s then Chief Operating Officer, Hamish Hamilton, visited the Western Australian donors with a psychologist to discuss the incident.
Court documents allege Monash was negligent in not having a secure system for identifying embryos to be used for transfer, failing to correctly identify the embryos to be used, failing to transfer the correct embryo to the recipient mother, and failing to conduct a post-transfer inspection of the embryos used.
“By participating in IVF services, including the storage, transportation and transfer of embryos, and by facilitating counseling sessions with recipient parents and obtaining plaintiffs’ consent to donate embryos to a known recipient couple for the purpose of embryo transfer, defendants assumed responsibility for the safe storage, care and transfer of embryos in accordance with the consent given,” the document states.
“First and Second Plaintiffs [the WA couple] they were in a vulnerable position and dependent on the Defendants to care for the embryos while they were in their custody and control.”
They claim that Monash IVF should have foreseen that donors would suffer a recognized psychiatric illness if reasonable care was not taken to ensure the correct identification and transfer of embryos.
The WA couple are suing Monash IVF for damages, claiming they suffered psychiatric injuries including chronic adjustment disorder with depressed and anxious mood and mild to moderate unresolved grief reaction and bereavement.
The mistake, which Monash IVF later blamed on “human error”, went undetected until nearly a year after the child’s birth, when clinic staff realized a woman had fewer embryos than recorded and eventually realized it had been transferred to the wrong patient.
In March 2025, Monash IVF appointed Fiona McLeod, SC, to conduct an independent investigation into the Brisbane error as its share price and reputation plummeted.
But the company was forced to expand the review within three months after admitting the wrong embryo was implanted in a different woman during a procedure at the Clayton clinic on June 5.
Some of the findings of this review were made public in August 2025; Monash said there were stark differences in the circumstances between the two cases, but human error was at the heart of both.
Monash IVF said the investigation found the two incidents were unrelated, different in nature and occurred years apart. It also found that both involved nonstandard IVF treatment and conditions that would not typically occur with most procedures.
Monash IVF has previously refused to talk about the negligence claim and a spokesman said it would not comment on individual cases or matters before the courts.
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