A crowd at the Alabama Statehouse listens to Corrin O’Brien of the Fight for Alabama Families Coalition speaker during a rally for protections for in vitro fertilization on Feb. 28, 2024 in Montgomery, Alabama. The rally took place prior to scheduled committee hearings in the Alabama Legislature on legislation to protect the procedure. (Brian Lyman/Alabama Reflector)
Two couples on Wednesday dropped a lawsuit against IVF providers in Mobile that claimed that the accidental destruction of their embryos constituted a wrongful death claim. One lawsuit remains.
The motion from the couples requested that the court dismiss their case with prejudice, meaning plaintiffs cannot make the same claim in the same court. The filing did not state a reason for the decision.
The two couples — James and Emily LePage; William Tripp Fonde and Caroline Fonde — filed their lawsuits against the Center for Reproductive Medicine and Mobile Infirmary Medical Center in 2021 after a patient in 2020 removed an embryo from the cryogenic environment, leading to its destruction.