Couple Awarded $73,975 for Lost Sperm Samples

After only four hours of deliberation, an Orange County Superior Court jury Tuesday awarded $72,975 to a couple who charged that a Santa Ana fertility center lost two frozen samples of the husband’s sperm.

In one of the first such cases to be tried in the county, jurors said the award was calculated to underwrite Carlos and Cathy Casas’ future attempts to have children through alternative methods such as in-vitro fertilization or use of donor sperm.

The main concern jurors had was “how do you set a value” on what the couple had lost, said juror Dick Kust, 59, of Irvine.

“We struggled a great deal” over that issue, he said. “We did feel . . . they had suffered from all this upset.”

“I felt these people lost a chance, an opportunity--not a guarantee of a child,” said juror Elaine Kraft, 29, of Seal Beach.

Carlos Casas said he was “grateful it came out in our favor,” although he said he was hoping for a larger award. Casas said he was still angry about the sperm bank’s actions, but had made up his mind that “I wasn’t going to get overemotional.”

Attorneys for the Fertility Center of California acknowledged that, under previous management, the sperm bank lost samples stored by Carlos Casas, now 35, before his 1982 vasectomy.

Casas, the father of two children from a previous marriage, underwent the vasectomy before divorcing and marrying Cathy Casas. In court documents, he stated that a key factor in Cathy Casas’ decision to marry him was the existence of three frozen sperm samples.

After one unsuccessful attempt at insemination, the Casases were told the center had lost the remaining samples. Since then, Casas underwent a failed attempt to reverse his vasectomy.

During the trial, the center’s attorney, Paul L. Tetreault, minimized the damage, citing the relatively small chance of a successful insemination from the two remaining samples.

“Like most things, the more you would store, the greater chances would be of success,” Tetreault said.

Tetreault said he was “reasonably pleased” with the jury’s verdict, which he termed “well-reasoned.” He said he doubted there would be an appeal.