Doctors have to pay part of the costs for a disability-friendly new building in case of incorrect pregnancy care. The parents had sued a daughter who had been born with severe physical deformities due to the genetic defect trisomy 18 and died at the age of three. The daughter could not hold her upper body and head independently, did not eat, crawl and run.

House building was necessary in view of the severe disability, the Higher Regional Court (OLG) ruled in Frankfurt. In addition, it was found that the applicants had discontinued the pregnancy if the treatment was correct.

In trisomy 18, one chromosome, part of the genome, occurs three times instead of twice. As a result, the children in the womb grow more slowly. They can develop malformations on the organs, which can be noticed on the ultrasound images during pregnancy care.

If there is a suspicion of trisomy 18, doctors can check it with amniocentesis or with a tissue sample from the placenta. Nevertheless, trisomy 18 is not recognized in all cases.

Trisomy 18 is not curable. Only one in twelve children is older than a year. Most die in the first two weeks of life.

Costs in the mid five-digit height

The family lived at the time of birth in a condominium that could not be adapted for the disabled. Therefore, she decided to build a house when her daughter was two years old and she was expecting a second child. The construction of the house was financed according to the court until the sale of the apartment through a loan. The family demanded from the doctors the assumption of the intermediate financing costs in middle five-digit height.

It was convincingly stated that the plaintiffs had decided to build the house because of their daughter's most serious disability and not because of further family planning, according to the judges.

Previously, the Wiesbaden district court had already accepted the lawsuit filed by the parents and, as a matter of principle, considered that the defendant physicians should be liable for damages (Ref. 7 O 217/00). The appeal was now unsuccessful before the OLG. The judgment is not yet final, the defendants can apply for the approval of the revision before the Federal Court.

Higher Regional Court Frankfurt am Main, judgment of 9 August 2018, Az. 8 U 181/16.