The Iowa Supreme Court has dismissed a lawsuit that accused a former University of Iowa doctor of secretly using his own sperm to artificially inseminate a patient without her consent. Over the course of the doctor's time in practice, he is accused of using his sperm through artificial insemination to impregnate at least 10 patients without their consent.

Between 1952 and 1959, Dr. John Randall served as the head of the University of Iowa’s OB-GYN department. During this time, Donna Miller and her husband, Bert Junior Miller, sought fertility treatment from Dr. Randall. The couple went on to conceive three children between 1954 and 1958, Nancy Miller, Bert Jay Miller, and Randy Miller. Only the third son, Randy Miller, was found to be the biological child of Donna Miller’s husband, Bert Junior Miller.

Decades later, Nancy and Bert Jay Miller filed a lawsuit against the state after an Ancestry.com DNA test revealed that Dr. Randall was their biological father, not Bert Junior Miller. The siblings accused the state of enabling fertility fraud, claiming Dr. Randall had used his own sperm without their mother’s knowledge or consent.

The case hinged on an Iowa law that holds healthcare professionals criminally or civilly liable for using their own sperm to inseminate patients. However, at the time of Donna Miller’s fertility treatment, no such laws existed because of the novelty of reproductive technology.

When the siblings brought their lawsuit forward, the state moved to dismiss it, arguing that the law could not be applied retroactively.

The case was initially dismissed by a lower court, but the siblings appealed the decision. Last month, the Iowa Supreme Court upheld the lower court’s ruling to dismiss the lawsuit. The court stated that Dr. Randall’s actions occurred during a time when no laws prohibited such conduct, making it impossible to apply the current law retroactively.

The law in question, the Fraud in Assisted Reproduction Act, was enacted in 2022. It explicitly allows lawsuits to be filed in cases where healthcare professionals use their own sperm to inseminate patients. However, the Iowa Supreme Court recognized that the law cannot be applied to actions that took place before its enactment.

The court also noted that it was unclear whether fraud had occurred in the first place. There was no evidence to confirm whether Dr. Randall had surreptitiously used his sperm or whether Donna Miller had consented in writing to the use of Dr. Randall’s sperm. The court explained that the lawsuit did not establish whether Donna Miller "understood about the identity of the donor whose sperm was used in the procedure." It suggested that the couple may have believed they were using an anonymous donor.

Additionally, the court highlighted that it was unclear what specific fertility issues Donna Miller and her husband faced or what type of treatment they received. Beyond the general time frame of the children’s births, the court found no clear evidence of when the family sought fertility treatment.

Donna Miller passed away in 2018, eight years after her husband’s death. Before her passing, she told her children about the fertility treatment she received from Dr. Randall but never indicated that anyone other than her husband was their biological father.

The siblings have faced significant challenges in pursuing their case against the doctor. They initially filed a malpractice lawsuit in Johnson County in 2022, but it was dismissed after the state determined that the statute of limitations had expired.

In 2024, Nancy and Bert Miller filed another medical malpractice lawsuit, arguing that they were “conceived through assisted reproduction in violation of Iowa Code 714I.3 (prohibited practices and acts).”

The siblings sought $200,000 in statutory damages, along with unspecified compensatory damages, under the 2022 Fraud in Assisted Reproduction Act. However, the Iowa Supreme Court upheld the lower court’s ruling, dismissing the lawsuit on the grounds that Dr. Randall’s actions occurred before the law was enacted.