A Florida couple says their hopes of having a biologically related child were shattered after discovering that a fertility clinic allegedly used sperm from an unknown man to create the embryo that became their daughter.
Joshua and Natalie Strong have filed a lawsuit against Jacksonville-based Brown Fertility, its medical director, Dr. Samuel Brown, and 10 other defendants. The suit alleges a clinic error led to their now-1-year-old daughter being biologically fathered by a stranger, according to court documents obtained by The Post.
“They trusted Brown Fertility, as well as its founder and owner, Samuel E. Brown, M.D., with the family they hoped to build. That trust was betrayed,” the couple said in the lawsuit, which was filed Thursday in Duval County Circuit Court.
“The Strongs are now raising a daughter whose paternity test confirms that another man, not Joshua, fathered her.”
The married couple had turned to Brown Fertility while trying to have children together, but say they were devastated by the DNA test results involving their daughter.
“It’s a daily struggle with the emotional aspect of it because you do have sadness and anger in the same day, you also have joy and love,” Joshua Strong told Jacksonville’s First Coast News.
Because Joshua had undergone a vasectomy years earlier, he needed an invasive sperm-retrieval procedure. The procedure produced four vials of sperm.
The couple paid tens of thousands of dollars for treatment at Brown Fertility, which was named among “America’s Best Fertility Clinics” in 2025.
According to the lawsuit, the sperm vials were provided to the clinic with the explicit understanding that they would be used to fertilize Natalie’s oocytes, creating embryos that would later be transferred to her.
Natalie delivered a baby girl in June 2025, though the couple said they began noticing that something was wrong almost immediately.
“Within the first day of life, routine newborn blood typing produced a result that did not fit,” the suit alleged. “The Strongs’ daughter typed Blood Type B Positive. That result is biologically impossible given Natalie’s blood type, O Negative, and Joshua’s blood type, A Negative.”
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Additional DNA testing later revealed there was a 0% probability Joshua was the newborn’s father
“It took away the euphoria of having a baby,” Natalie told the outlet. “It was my first child, I was in heaven. It was the best day of my life and then when that hit us, it took all the happiness away, which we should have had for a very long time.”
The couple has told the clinic of the test results but have not gotten answers.
“Despite irrefutable DNA evidence, Brown Fertility and Dr. Brown have refused to admit what they did, refused to account for Joshua’s missing sperm, and refused to take responsibility,” the suit says.
It was the second time the couple had gone through the IVF process with the clinic, as Natalie had had a miscarriage one month into their first try in mid-2024.
The couple claims Brown Fertility had used the wrong sperm for the first pregnancy too, and the location of Joshua’s sperm was revealed.
The couple alleged the clinic has not revealed where Joshua’s sperm has gone, whether it was misplaced, discarded or used to create another couple’s embryo without their knowledge.
“The Strongs do not know whether Joshua has biological children, fathered without his knowledge, being raised today by other Brown Fertility patients who have no idea,” the suit says
The Strongs are seeking damages in excess of $50,000 and a trial by jury in the case.
“Natalie suffers the daily knowledge that her body was used, twice, to carry a stranger’s child,” the lawsuit says.
“Joshua suffers the daily knowledge that the daughter he is raising bears no biological connection to him, the loss of the irreplaceable genetic future he believed he was building with his wife, and the unending question of what became of his cryopreserved sperm.”