Women sue sperm bank over lost embryos

NEW YORK --Two New Jersey women who hoped to have a child together have sued a sperm bank for $3 million, claiming the frozen storage facility lost their embryos.

Cathy L. Berger and Adriana Pacheco of Hoboken, N.J., said in court papers they gave Repro Lab Inc. six embryos to store in September 2003. The couple said they had signed a contract to store the tissues there.

Repro is a sperm bank that also stores embryos, according to the company's Web site.

The couple tried to collect the frozen embryos, created with eggs from Pacheco, in March 2006 after Berger began medical preparation for implantation, according to court papers.

But the Manhattan-based Repro told the couple that the embryos "were missing, could not be found, and had been lost," court papers said.

In their lawsuit, filed Friday in a Manhattan court, Berger and Pacheco say the "careless, unskillful, negligent" loss of their "irreplaceable property" had caused them "pain, injury, mental anguish and emotional distress."

The lawsuit seeks unspecified punitive damages.

A woman who answered the telephone at Repro's office said no one at the facility would have any comment on the lawsuit.

The couple's lawyer, Susan Dennehy, declined to comment.