(Des Moines, Iowa) – A Monroe County woman is suing a drug-testing company that she alleges falsely reported she tested positive for cocaine when giving birth at a Des Moines hospital. According to the Iowa Capital Dispatch, Emily Donlin is suing United States Drug Testing Laboratories, a private, for-profit Illinois company, in U.S, District Court for the Southern District of Iowa.

Donlin alleges she that in 2023, she and her husband Michael Donlin were “happily expecting” their second child and that on the evening of March 29, 2023, she delivered a son at a hospital identified in other court records as Des Moines’ Broadlawns Medical Center.

According to the lawsuit, a hospital nurse then collected part of the umbilical cord and sent it to USDTL for testing. The documentation that accompanied the cord included “errors and omissions,” the lawsuit claims, and did not provide any reason or justification for the testing.

USDTL allegedly “returned a false positive result for cocaine,” the lawsuit claims, and no additional testing was performed to confirm the results. USDTL then reported the results to the hospital, but “never contacted Emily to inform her of the positive result.”

Broadlawns Medical Center of Des Moines. (Photo via Google Earth)

The lawsuit claims Donlin “did not learn of the false positive until a social worker with the Department of Health and Human Services came knocking on her door” and later issued a founded report of child abuse based solely on the false positive test.

As a result, the lawsuit alleges, Donlin was incorrectly placed on the state’s Central Abuse Registry. The Donlins were then “dragged into expensive and stressful Child in Need of Assistance proceedings based on the single positive test,” the lawsuit claims. When the umbilical cord was later retested by another laboratory, the results confirmed the first test had resulted in a false positive, the lawsuit claims.The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages for alleged negligence, defamation and false light invasion of privacy.

In its response to the allegations, USDTL admits testing the umbilical cord, but denies its results were a “false positive” for cocaine. The company admits that it did not inform Donlin of the test results, but says the results were relayed to Broadlawns Medical Center, “its customer who requested the testing.”