A Florida couple has sued a Jacksonville fertility clinic, alleging their infant daughter was conceived with a stranger’s sperm after the clinic botched their IVF procedure.
Joshua and Natalie Strong filed the lawsuit against Brown Fertility and its medical director, Dr. Samuel Brown, in Duval County Circuit Court last Thursday, naming 11 defendants total. The couple, who had paid the clinic “tens of thousands of dollars” for the treatment, are seeking damages exceeding $50,000 and a trial by jury.
The Strongs’ ordeal began with hope. Joshua, who had previously undergone a vasectomy, endured an invasive surgical sperm retrieval that produced four vials of his sperm. The couple entrusted those vials to Brown Fertility under explicit terms: the clinic would fertilize Natalie’s oocytes with Joshua’s sperm, then transfer the resulting embryos to her womb. Natalie had already suffered a miscarriage one month into a first IVF attempt with the clinic in mid-2024.
Their daughter was born in June 2025. Within her first day of life, routine newborn blood testing yielded a result that immediately alarmed the couple. “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.”
Subsequent DNA testing confirmed the worst: there was a 0% probability Joshua was the biological father. The couple now alleges Brown Fertility used another man’s sperm to create their daughter’s embryo — and may have done so during the first pregnancy as well.
Natalie Strong described the emotional whiplash to Jacksonville’s First Coast News. “It took away the euphoria of having a baby,” she said. “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.”
Joshua Strong detailed the daily toll to the same outlet. “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,” he said.
The lawsuit paints a stark portrait of ongoing anguish for both parents. “Natalie suffers the daily knowledge that her body was used, twice, to carry a stranger’s child,” the filing states. “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.”
The couple’s legal filing also raises the possibility that Joshua’s sperm was used without consent elsewhere. “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 clinic has allegedly refused to account for the missing sperm or explain whether it was misplaced, discarded, or used for another patient’s embryo.
Despite what the lawsuit calls “irrefutable DNA evidence,” the clinic and Dr. Brown have not admitted fault, according to the filing. “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 states.
The couple’s original statement in the filing frames their case as a breach of fundamental trust. “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,” they wrote. “The Strongs are now raising a daughter whose paternity test confirms that another man, not Joshua, fathered her.”
Brown Fertility was named one of “America’s Best Fertility Clinics” in 2025.
The lawsuit was filed in Duval County Circuit Court.