LOS ANGELES : Woman Who Sued to Gain Sperm Wins Latest Battle

A woman who won the right to inherit frozen sperm left by her boyfriend won another legal battle on Friday when a judge dismissed a lawsuit claiming she should have prevented the man’s suicide.

The man’s children, William Everett Kane Jr. and Katherine Elizabeth Kane, filed a wrongful death lawsuit alleging that Deborah Ellen Hecht knew William E. Kane was suicidal and should have prevented his death in a Las Vegas hotel room in 1991.

Sandra McMahon Irwin, the children’s mother and attorney, claimed that Hecht did not try to stop the suicide because Kane had transferred $800,000 in assets to his lover, who also thought she was the beneficiary of a $1-million life insurance policy. Irwin said she would appeal the ruling in this case and the earlier decision giving the sperm to Hecht.

“The judge threw it out because the law in California requires there to be a special relationship that is recognized by law for there to be a duty to prevent a suicide,” said Marvin Rudnick, Hecht’s attorney.