Despite being born with spina bifida and being hooked up to tubes for up to 24 hours a day on some days, Evie Toombes managed to become an equestrian showjumping star.
Still, Toombes regrets her birth and sued her mother’s doctor for “wrongful conception.” Not only did she sue but she won the landmark lawsuit entitling her to millions in damages.
According to the Mayo Clinic, spina bifida is a birth defect that affects the spine and spinal cord from forming properly.
It’s classified as a neural tube defect.
The neural tubes in babies with spina bifida don’t close or develop properly. The neural tube is what eventually becomes the baby’s brain, spinal cord, and tissues that enclose them.
Toombes sued Dr. Philip Mitchell saying he failed to properly advise her mother to take important supplements that would have minimized the risk for her offspring to have spina bifida.
Toombes argued that if he had told her mother, Caroline Toombes, to take folic acid she would have waited to get pregnant until she had sufficient vitamins to ensure proper conception.
If she would have waited to get pregnant, Toombes said she would have never been born, which is why she’s claiming wrongful conception for “having been born in a damaged state.”
The judge agreed, saying that if Caroline Toombes was “provided with the correct recommended advice, she would have delayed attempts to conceive” and ruled in Toombes’ favor.
“‘In the circumstances, there would have been a later conception, which would have resulted in a normal healthy child,” the judge ruled.
Though the amount that Toombes is entitled to for winning her lawsuit hasn’t been calculated, Daily Mail advises that it would be “big” since it would cover the cost of her lifelong care needs.
Caroline Toombs told the court how she specifically waited to get pregnant “until after they had received advice” from their doctor.
Caroline Toombs said she even discussed folic acid with her doctor during her pre-pregnancy appointments. However, he never mentioned the importance of spina bifida prevention.
“He told me it was not necessary,” Caroline Toombs told the judge. “I was advised that if I had a good diet previously, I would not have to take folic acid.”
The doctor’s defense teams denied liability and said she could have already been pregnant at the time of her visit.
The doctor claims that he gave her “reasonable advice” about folic acid.”
He also claimed that he never told her not to take folic acid. The judge, however, wasn’t buying it.
The implications of the ruling have made history.
It means that health care professionals can now be found liable for negligence when it comes to pre-conception advice that results in the birth of a child with a serious medical condition.
You can hear Toombes discuss the groundbreaking case in her interview with The Morning below.
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