Avant Law

A contradictor has argued against Monash IVF’s bid for orders allowing it to retain embryos as evidence in a class action, saying the Victorian Supreme Court has no power to make orders inconsistent with the company’s statutory obligation to store embryos for a maximum of five years. 

Monash IVF is fighting a class action’s bid to file a fourth statement of claim in the three year-old case over the alleged destruction of potentially viable embryos, saying the proposed pleadings sparked by an expert report constituted a new case. 

Monash IVF is gearing up for a legal privilege fight as it faces new claims about the team of senior doctors and directors working on a novel testing technique at the heart of a class action, including claims that one doctor “burnt paper evidence” from a trial of the technology.

Monash IVF has hit back at a class action brought on behalf of hundreds of men and women demanding damages for the alleged destruction of potentially viable embryos, saying patients “were made aware of the risks” of a novel testing technique.

Fertility clinic IVF Australia is facing a lawsuit worth “many millions of dollars” launched by the parents of a child born with Pallister-Kilian syndrome, alleging it did not carry out a vital pre-implantation diagnostic test that would have identified the disease.

Two gynaecologists have lost their bid to dismiss a negligence lawsuit brought by a patient implanted with a Johnson & Johnson pelvic mesh device found by a judge overseeing a related class action to have been defective.

A Federal Court judge has frowned on a bid to transfer 12 individual cases over allegedly defective pelvic mesh to various state and territory courts, saying the manner in which the cases had been brought reminded him of the 1990’s when “mobile phones resembled house bricks” and suggesting the cases could be brought as a class action.

A Federal Court judge has expressed disbelief that hundreds of lawsuits are being pursued over allegedly defective  pelvic mesh, saying he was “absolutely flummoxed” as to why the law firm leading them hadn’t considered filing a class action.