'Wrongful Pregnancy': Family Awarded $10 Million For Injection Mistake

In a "wrongful pregnancy" case, a federal judge in Seattle has awarded a family $10 million to take care of their disabled child who was born after a nurse mistakenly gave the mother a flu shot instead of a birth control injection.

The incident happened in 2011. The woman, Yesenia Pacheco, was already a mother of two children at the time and had not intended to become pregnant again so that she could help support her family, The Seattle Times reported, citing court documents.

On Sept. 30, 2011, a nurse at a federally-funded Neighborcare Health center in Seattle mistakenly injected her with a flu vaccine instead of a Depo-Provera shot for birth control. The nurse had been administering flu vaccines that day and reportedly did not check Pacheco's chart.

Pacheco found out that she was not given the birth control injection only months later when she called the clinic for her next appointment. By that time, the woman was already pregnant.

She gave birth to a child, identified in the court documents as "SLP", who was born with a birth defect called bilateral perisylvian polymicrogyria (PMG). According to the National Institutes for Health (NIH), PMG is a rare neurological disorder that affects the outer surface of the brain. The severity of symptoms may vary from one person to another, but it may include speech difficulty, partial paralysis of facial muscles, excessive drooling, seizures, intellectual disability and developmental delays.

In SLP's case, the condition has caused complications including vision problems, epilepsy, cognitive delays and slowed speech among others. She also reportedly has an IQ of 70, which the American Psychiatric Association (APA) says is an indication of a "significant limitation in intellectual functioning."

The child is expected to live a normal life span but the attorneys who represented the family noted that she does require assistance and care.

The lawsuit was first filed in 2015. Last week, U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik awarded the child $7.5 million for her medical and educational expenses and a total of $2.5 million to her mother and father. The judge noted that Pacheco took "affirmative steps" to avoid pregnancy and that she would not have become pregnant had she received the right injection, The Seattle Times reported.

The court documents described it as a "wrongful pregnancy" and "wrongful life" case.

This was not the first time that the wrong medication was given to a patient.

In 2019, 10 residents and staff of a group home in Oklahoma had to be hospitalized after they were mistakenly administered with insulin instead of the flu vaccine. They experienced symptoms of dangerously low blood sugar soon after they received the shots. It was believed that the pharmacist who administered the shots mistook a vial of insulin for the vaccine.