Plaintiffs in the Pacific Fertility Center litigation cleared an important pretrial hurdle on March 8, 2021, when the Court denied a motion for summary judgment filed by defendant Chart Industries, Inc.
Chart manufactured a storage tank containing Plaintiffs’ cryopreserved eggs and embryos that catastrophically failed. Plaintiffs seek to recover compensatory and punitive damages against Chart for this tank-failure incident, which occurred at Pacific Fertility Center’s San Francisco clinic in early March 2018. Girard Sharp filed the first case arising out of the incident and serves as co-lead counsel for Plaintiffs in the consolidated litigation pending in federal court, which is set for trial on May 3, 2021.
In denying summary judgment, the Court noted evidence that “Chart was aware of the defect, that it took no action to address the defect unless the issue was raised by a customer, and that it was aware that sudden changes in the liquid nitrogen level (which the controller should alert for) could cause damage and loss of function to the freezer.” The Court also upheld Plaintiffs’ punitive damage request for trial and rejected Chart’s attempts to exclude the testimony of Plaintiffs’ expert witnesses.
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