Natera settles class action over prenatal tests for $8.25M

Filed 5h ago · Via Courthouse News · The Buffoon Desk

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Court of the Queen

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Jack de Nijs for Anefo · CC0 · via Wikimedia Commons

A federal judge in Oakland approved an $8.25 million settlement between Natera and a class of consumers who used the company's Panorama and Vasistera prenatal tests, which screen for rare genetic conditions using only a blood sample.

The class accused Natera of marketing the tests as reliable while knowing they could produce a high rate of false positives, following a 2022 New York Times investigation into the industry. Attorneys will take roughly $2.4 million in fees, class representatives get $7,500 each, and ordinary claimants can expect up to 10% of their costs or a flat $30 without a receipt.

Natera admitted no liability but agreed to add language clarifying that its tests are screening tools, not diagnoses, and that high-risk results need confirmation through more invasive testing. The notice process itself hit snags, reaching only a portion of the class before deadlines were reset to July.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

Eight and a quarter million dollars sounds like a lot until you remember it's spread over years of people making decisions about a pregnancy based on a number the company already knew could be wrong. The fix here isn't a recall, it's a sentence added to a website nobody reads until after the fact. That's not justice, that's a very expensive asterisk.

Source: Read the original at Courthouse News → Scored: Court of the Queen · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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