I just happened to run across this in my local newspaper today and found it interesting. Two women found out they were switched at birth now 62 years later. I wonder how many other children accidently got sent home with the wrong parents? I know when my son was born my son and I got matching bracelets with a bar code on it, but they haven't started to do this until recent years. In this case the womens' lawsuit was dismissed. Do you believe they deserve to collect compensatory or punitive damages after all this time???

*****************************************************



Women switched at birth have lawsuit dismissed

Associated Press, Published Wednesday, July 23, 2008
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) _ Two women who say they were switched at birth have lost an attempt to collect damages from the hospital where they were born almost 62 years ago.


A federal appeals court on Tuesday affirmed the dismissal of a lawsuit filed by Rowena Madrigal and Beverly Bowker, concluding the women waited too long to sue after they began investigating the possibility they were sent home with the wrong parents.


"Witnesses have died or retired, memories have faded, personnel records have been destroyed, and medical records are unavailable," said the ruling by the three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. "We see no legal basis to permit these claims to proceed at such a late date."


Attorneys in the case could not be reached immediately for comment. A federal civil claim normally must be filed within two years of the suspected harm, court documents say.


Madrigal and Bowker were born less than three hours apart on July 27, 1946, at the Standing Rock Hospital at Fort Yates, N.D., court filings say. The hospital is on the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation and is run by the federal Indian Health Service.


Bowker said she had heard rumors since she was in elementary school that the couple who raised her, Virgil and Susie Slow Bowker, were not her biological parents. The elder Bowkers have died, court records say.


In a deposition Beverly Bowker gave in the case, she said she met Madrigal at a hospital in Rapid City, S.D., and was struck by her resemblance to Bowker's older brother.


In the early 1970s, Bowker said, she went to visit Michael Ryan and Grace Medicine, whom she suspected were her biological parents. At the time, they had been divorced for more than 20 years.


Medicine, who lived in Wakpala, S.D., when Bowker was born, had been sent home from the hospital with Madrigal. At the time, Ryan was in Chicago, pursuing a professional boxing career, and he was not present at the birth, he said in a deposition he gave in the case.


Bowker kept in touch with Ryan and Medicine, and they both attended her graduation from Black Hills State College in Spearfish, S.D., in 1974, she said.


"I guess I always had this nagging question," Bowker said in her deposition. "If something happened at the hospital ... I really wanted to know."


Ryan suggested that he and Bowker have their DNA tested. Two tests, performed in July 2002 and January 2004, both showed Ryan to be Bowker's father, and concluded he was not the father of Madrigal. Ryan said he had not sought a blood test earlier because his sister, a nurse, had questioned whether it would be useful.


Ryan filed a negligence claim against the federal government in September 2002, while Madrigal and Bowker filed their own claims in January 2004, court records say. Medicine has never filed a claim and has said she does not want to take part in the court case, records say.


Karen Klein, a U.S. magistrate in Fargo, dismissed the lawsuit in February 2007, ruling that the claims were filed too late. The appeals court's decision on Tuesday upheld that finding.


"This case presents a series of events in the 1970s which demonstrate plaintiffs had more than a hunch or suspicion that an injury had occurred," Klein wrote in her dismissal order. "They did not act with reasonable diligence in pursuing their rights. The period of limitations expired well before plaintiffs filed their administrative claims."

http://www.wday.com/news/index.cfm?id=5227

No, after sixty plus years, I think the persons they called "mom and dad" would be just that. Your parents aren't who gave birth to you, it's who raised you.

If someone is adopted, that doesn't make the adoptive parents any less mom and dad. So if your switched, no one realized for over 18 years, it's too late be raised by someone again. The ideal of your parents has already been ingrained in your head. You might want to know who your "birth parents" are, but they will never be "mom and dad."

I think the hospital should be held liable!

Ive always suspected that my sister belonged to the troll people (thank god she deactivated...)

I guess as a parent, I would always want to know if my own flesh and blood was being raised in another home. I think it is a horribe mistake and does need to be justified no matter how much time has passed. I also agree with Roaming that after THAT amount of time has passed, you should respect the ones that have raised you and have known to be your parents for your life. In that aspect credit should be given to where credit is due. Thanks & appreciation to the parents (birth or not) whom did the parenting. But I still believe knowledge of the "switch" is tramatic and life changing which deserves compensation. No matter the amount of years! Can you imagine how many years it took to figure it out? This was a relatively small town, can you imagine in a bigger city where 50 babies are born a day rather than 5? There are lucky they discovered the truth!

I don't know, I'd say they were unlucky to find out. There are things in life that are best just not to know. You have no relation to mom and pop, that's high on the list.

My dad was adopted, he found out the old fashioned way, rummaging through grandpa's file cabinet. He went ahead, when he was older, and found out who his birth parents were. Once he got the name, he didn't care anymore. Never once tried to meet them. "I know who my mom and dad are." was all he really said to us kids about it.

After that long, I wouldn't want to know. And to sue a hospital? This is why medical costs are so expensive. Anyone here (besides me) old enough to remember when hospitals were not-for-profit? Sure, it's a large error, that no one caught for sixty years. Haven't you ever made a mistake? Lost your car keys? Dropped dinner on the floor? Mislabeled a Christmas gift? Considering most babies (I've heard of that weren't induced) come at about 3 am, I'm suprised anyone was coherent enough to get the baby in the "right bassinet."

Switching someone's child shouldn't be compared to misplacing car keys!



It is a major mistake, and shouldn't be dismissed because the birth occurred at 3:00 am. If a surgeon accidently removed a wrong organ should it be excuseable because of the surgeon had a long day???

Of course we all make minor mistakes...and if I ever I made a mistake of this magnitude I would expect to "pay the price" for the error.

I'm not saying it's right, and while the comparisons might be trivial, the point is we've all made errors. My point was that lawsuits in a situation such as this are always the wrong course.

The shock and trauma of this is really what? I had a horrible experience sixty years ago, that I had no knowledge of at any time, so I want everyone to suffer now? I want to bleed caregivers of money so that my friends and neighbors cannot afford to live a healthy life?

It's confusing yes, but it will not change the person that one is, and it will not change the past for you, so there is no reason to dwell on it. The truth is all that happened was these people's families just got a little bigger. But no one wants to see that. What people look at is "who's to blame." Why point fingers and look for blame? Isn't it just easier to deal with a situation and find a solution? The article never really says how the error occured. For all anyone knows, the parents could have been talking in front of the hospital, set the basinets down, got done chatting, grabbed the wrong one and walked off.

I might be way off base here. It's just an opinion.

Everyone has a right to their own opinion. This includes the women in this case. Who are we to judge what is damaging and influential in their lives compared to ours or others?

As for hospital costs. Hospitals and clinics have liability funds incase of lawsuits such as this. Also it is under the discretion of the establishment whether they want to assume responsiblity (support the health care worker/ or doctor) of the incident based on how valued the employee or frequency of mistakes made by the employee. In any case the establishment can choose to terminate said person's employement which would release their responsibilty (the hospital's) and make it a civil or malpractice suit against the person at fault. Of course not all cases can not be pinpointed to one person, in which the hospital would be at fault. But, in this case records may show a certain nurse on shift and at what time... Which is unfortunate that so many years have passed because I think this is worth compensation.

My 2 cents & a potato chip!