A federal judge has more than halved the $5.25 million a Vermont fertility doctor was ordered to pay a Florida woman who accused him of deceitfully using his own sperm to impregnate her.
Instead, Judge William K. Sessions III ordered Dr. John Boyd Coates III, of Shelburne, to pay a total of $2.2 million to Cheryl Rousseau, finding that a jury erred in calculating damages in her civil lawsuit.
Coates’ attorneys had sought a new trial after the jury’s verdict in March, arguing in court filings that the $5 million in punitive damages and $250,000 in compensatory damages were excessive. Rousseau’s lawyers disagreed.
Compensatory damages are intended to compensate victims for a loss sustained as a result of a defendant’s actions, while punitive damages punish the defendant and serve as a deterrent to others who might act similarly.
In his 24-page ruling filed in federal court in Burlington Tuesday, Sessions wrote that $200,000 in compensatory damages was more in line with past awards for similar claims of “significant emotional distress.”
Sessions wrote that a more than single-digit ratio of punitive damages to compensatory damages have raised “due process concerns” in past appellate court rulings. He called the jury’s punitive-to-compensatory ratio of 25:1 in the Coates case “impermissibly high.”
The judge wrote he needed “to strike a balance between recognizing the reprehensible nature” of Coates’ conduct “while adhering to federal and state limits to punitive damages awards.”
“The Court further finds that a 10:1 ratio, thereby bringing the punitive damages award to $2,000,000, is the ‘outer limit’ of what would be permissible when considering all the relevant factors,” Sessions wrote.
The judge wrote that he would order a new trial to determine damages if Rousseau was not satisfied with the reduction.
Celeste Laramie, the attorney representing Rousseau, said Wednesday she had only just seen the judge’s order and had not had time yet to discuss options with her client.
“We’re disappointed he saw fit to reduce it, but (Sessions’) logic, as with any of his opinions, is very well thought out,” Laramie said.
Peter Joslin, an attorney for Coates, did not return a phone message Wednesday afternoon.
Following the three-day trial in March, the eight-person jury found for Rousseau on all counts in the lawsuit against Coates, including fraud, breach of contract, battery and failing to obtain informed consent.
The award of $5.25 million in damages reflected the exact amount Rousseau’s legal team was seeking.
According to the lawsuit filed in 2018, Rousseau went to Coates for fertility treatment more than four decades ago when he was practicing in Vermont.
She filed suit after her daughter, through the use of online sites Ancestry.com and 23andme.com, discovered information about her biological father that were traced back to Coates as the sperm donor, according to the lawsuit.
Coates, who is now retired, took the stand during his trial, admitting that he had denied during earlier depositions that he used his sperm to impregnate Rousseau. However, he later changed his story after learning that a court-ordered DNA test found with a 99.99% certainty that he was the biological father of Rousseau’s daughter.
Coates testified that he didn’t recall using his own sperm or that he even had Rousseau as a patient, leading to the conflicting stories. He realized he was the donor when faced with the DNA results, he said.
According to the lawsuit, Rousseau said she told Coates that she wanted the donor to have characteristics of her husband and that the doctor told her the donor would be an unnamed medical student.
Another woman had also filed a lawsuit against Coates alleging similar conduct. That lawsuit remains pending in federal court in Burlington.
