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The Indiana Court of Appeals heard arguments Wednesday morning in a civil case against Dr. Donald Cline, a retired fertility doctor in Zionsville who has admitted to using his own sperm to inseminate patients without their knowledge.
At issue is whether too much time has passed for the daughter of a woman who was artificially inseminated by the doctor to have a legitimate malpractice claim against him.
The plaintiff, who filed the lawsuit anonymously, said she filed the suit against Cline as soon as she discovered he was her biological father following the results of a DNA test she took in 2022.
Attorneys for Cline, however, argued that the plaintiff had filed the lawsuit after the two-year statute of limitations for a medical malpractice lawsuit had expired.
The plaintiff said she learned that Cline had used his own sperm on patients via news reports in 2019, but that she didn’t think Cline had done the same to her mother because at the time, it was believed that Cline had only used his sperm on patients who did not have a husband or spouse donating their sperm, according to court documents.
Cline’s attorneys said the trigger date for the plaintiff filing a lawsuit should’ve started when she learned about Cline’s actions in 2019. But the plaintiff argued that because she didn’t know Cline had done the same to her mom, the trigger date didn’t start until 2022 when she confirmed her genetics using the DNA test, according to court documents.
Marion Superior Court Judge Timothy Oakes granted summary judgment to Cline last July. Quoting the case Herron v. Agibo, 897 N.E.2d 444, 449 (Ind. 2008), Oakes wrote in his order that the Medical Malpractice Act requires that plaintiffs “inquire into the possibility of a claim within the remaining limitations period, and to institute a claim within that period or forego it.”
Oakes said the trigger date for the two-year statute of limitations starts when a patient “either knows of malpractice and the resulting injury or learns of facts that, in the exercise of reasonable diligence, should lead to the discovery thereof,” according to documents.
The plaintiff appealed to the court of appeals in August. Hearing the case on Wednesday was a three-judge appellate panel composed of Chief Judge Robert Altice, Judge Elizabeth Tavitas, and Judge Elaine Brown.
While the plaintiff’s/appellant’s case was filed under general negligence and malpractice, newer legislation was passed in 2019 covers civil fertility fraud. When asked by Judge Tavitas about why attorneys for the appellant didn’t file her suit under fertility fraud, which follows a different statute of limitations, her attorneys said the legislation doesn’t apply retroactively, as in this case.
The appellant’s attorneys argued before the appeals court that their client used reasonable diligence by filing a lawsuit within a month of getting her DNA results back. They said it’s reasonable that she didn’t act when she first found out about Cline’s actions in 2019 because she didn’t believe the allegations against him would affect her.
“She thought it was unfathomable because the doctor told her parents that he was using his [the father who raised her] sperm…and then when she found new information, she acted immediately,” appellant attorney William Winingham told the judges.
Unlike in typical malpractice suits, where patients usually receive a letter informing them of a medical error, the appellant was not confronted with the error until she took the DNA test, her attorneys argued.
Attorneys for Cline said that the possibility or suspicion of medical malpractice should be enough to trigger a victim to investigate malpractice. They argued that in 2019, the appellant knew Cline had deceived multiple patients, and that because her mom was one of his patients, that was enough information to trigger an investigation.
The doctor’s attorneys said any other reasonable person would’ve started investigating in 2019, to which Chief Judge Altice reasoned that that is quite a burden to put on someone when they aren’t certain the malpractice affects them.
Cline’s attorneys said it’s unreasonable for the appellant to rely on Cline saying he used the correct sperm on her mother when Cline is a known liar. Ultimately, other potential victims pursued DNA tests within the statute of limitations without knowing for certain whether Cline’s actions impacted them, so the appellant in this case should not be an exception, they said.
The case is Anonymous Child 1 v. Anonymous Physician, 24A-CT-1874.
Cline’s actions were the focus of a 2022 Netflix documentary, “Our Father”, which recounts the discovery of dozens of half-siblings who learned Cline was their biological father. DNA testing suggests Cline deceptively fathered 94 children.
In December, one of his biological children won a lawsuit against Netflix for using her name in the documentary without consent.
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