Hospital sued after wrongly telling man he's not father of baby

A California woman sued a Pasadena hospital after a nurse there wrongly told her the child she gave birth to was not her husband's, court documents say. Cathleen Clarke sued Huntington Memorial Hospital in Superior Court, seeking general and special damages for what she said was negligent infliction of emotional distress and loss of consortium, the Courthouse News Service reported Tuesday. Clarke alleges the nurse, whose name wasn't reported, told the couple that blood tests showed the husband wasn't the baby's father, shortly after the birth April 27, 2011. Clarke was artificially inseminated and the couple deduced that the fertility doctor must have used another man's sperm in the procedure. Tests done in March 2012 proved Clarke's husband was, in fact, the baby's father, after the couple began divorce proceedings. The "nurse knew or should have known that the information communicated to plaintiff was not true," Clarke says in the lawsuit. "As a result of the statements of the nurse, plaintiff and her husband underwent counseling and expended money in reliance on the statements and misrepresentations. Plaintiff also suffered extreme emotional distress as a result of the statements by the nurse and being of the belief that her husband may not have been the father of the child," the lawsuit says.