A court has ordered a private clinic in the French Riviera city of Cannes to pay out €400,000 ($565,000 Cdn) each to two 20-year-old girls accidentally switched at birth and given to the wrong parents.
The award is part of a €1.88-million ($2.7 million Cdn) payment to members of the two families.
The clinic's lawyer, Sophie Chas, said she wasn't immediately certain whether an appeal would be lodged against Tuesday's decision by the court in Grasse.
'It's a relief. We have waited for this for so long.'- Sophie Serrano
Chas said the court ordered payments by the Clinica Jourdan and an insurance company of €300,000 for each of three parents involved in the case and €60,000 for three brothers and sisters.
"I am perfectly satisfied (with the ruling) because responsibility within the medical chain was acknowledged," the lawyer for the victims, Gilbert Collard, said in a telephone interview. The families had sought a total of €12 million, but had little hope of obtaining that amount, he said.
A nurse's assistant had accidentally given baby Manon Serrano, who was in an incubator, to another mother after her birth in July 1994, and given the infant next to her to Sophie Serrano.
Three years later, Manon's hair grew curly and her skin olive-toned — unlike either parent. Her father separated from Sophie Serrano after village rumors spread about the young girl being "the postman's daughter." In 2004, DNA tests showed that Manon was the daughter of neither of them. An investigation was launched and their biological child was located — some 30 kilometres away.
Sophie Serrano, who raised Manon, expressed relief that the error was at last acknowledged.
"It's a relief. We have waited for this for so long," she said on iTele TV station.
The other family involved in the case has chosen to remain anonymous.
The suit brought in 2010 by the two families also targeted two doctors and the nurse's assistant who made the mistaken switch, but the court did not convict them.
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