Court orders hospital to pay 3.3 million crowns in damages to families of switched babies

A court has ordered the Třebíč hospital to pay a total of 3.3 million crowns in damages to two families of baby girls accidentally switched at birth. The families had been asking asked for almost four times that amount. The hospital, meanwhile, had offered the families a payment of 600,000 crowns. Baby girls Veronika and Nikola were mistakenly switched after they were born in 2006, but the mix-up was only uncovered ten months later, after one of the couples underwent DNA testing. The children were then eventually switched back to their biological parents. The damages have not been divided equally between the couples, but on the basis of individual trauma (as assessed by psychological testing). One couple will receive 1.2 million, the other, 2.1. In his ruling, the judge called the original offer made by the hospital “inadequately low” given the mistakes that had been made.

Author: Jan Velinger