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Genetic Testing Doctors' Liability Grows As Tests Become Widely Used

By ALM Staff | Law Journal Newsletters |
November 30, 2004

Court rulings across the country are showing that the increased use of genetic testing has substantially expanded physicians' liability for failure to counsel patients about hereditary disorders. In recent years courts in Minnesota, North Carolina, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Utah, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Virginia have ruled on medical malpractice cases stemming from genetic testing issues. Decisions issued in those courts have tried to carve out rules on when physicians have a duty to relay information gleaned from genetic testing.

The cases have involved a number of issues, ranging from the chances of family members passing on an abnormal gene to a child, to whether parents can collect damages for conceiving or giving birth to a child with severe genetic defects due to a physician's failure to detect the likelihood of the disorder. In a landmark wrongful conception case, the Minnesota Supreme Court recently found that a doctor owes a patient's biological parents a duty of care if the results of a test or diagnosis could foreseeably injure them. Molloy v. Meier, 679 N.W.2d 711 (2004).

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