[L]awyers for the fertility doctor accused of using his own semen to impregnate a woman more than 40 years ago have filed a motion for reconsideration after a judge ruled last month that he must submit to a saliva DNA test.
The motion asks that the court vacate its prior ruling, arguing that the plaintiffs failed to meet their burden of showing that Dr. John Boyd Coates III’s DNA is truly “in controversy” and that there is “good cause” for the requested examination.
A lawsuit was filed against Coates by Cheryl and Peter Rousseau in 2018 after their daughter used Ancestry.com and 23andme.com to find out information about her biological father. The results from those sites traced back to Coates as her sperm donor, rather than a medical student, as Coates had originally told the Rousseaus.
Peter Joslin, Coates’ lawyer, said he was not available for comment about the case.
The defense used an argument based off a U.S. Supreme Court case, Schlagenhauf v. Holder, which says that a court cannot require a physical test from someone based solely on the claims of their opponent in the case.
But the Rousseaus’ lawyers believe that Coates should be subject to a court-ordered DNA test, because he was the one to refute the evidence in the online ancestry tests.
Celeste Laramie, a lawyer representing the Rousseaus, said she doesn’t think the motion to dismiss will be successful. She plans to file an opposition to the motion, which she has 14 days to do.
“In our view, they’re just reusing an argument they already used in the initial briefing,” Laramie said.
Coates’ attorneys requested that if the judge does not dismiss the order for DNA testing, the order be delayed. They would like 14 days to review the tests the family did through online services to “determine the extent to which the information from Ancestry.com or 23andMe.com supports the allegation of a parent-child relationship,” and thus whether the Rousseaus have grounds for the examination that they seek.
Laramie said she wasn’t at all surprised to see that Coates’ lawyers filed a motion for the judge to reconsider the case, even though she thinks they won’t succeed.
“They want a delay,” Laramie said. “And this is just another attempt to delay him from doing his DNA test.”
