Civil trial continued against Grand Junction doctor accused of using own sperm to inseminate patients

GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. (KJCT) - UPDATE (April 27 at 5:05 p.m.): The jury has reached a verdict regarding Dr. Paul Jones’ accusations of using his own sperm to inseminate patients without their consent.

Plaintiffs have been awarded an estimated $8.7 million in punitive damages.

INITIAL ARTICLE: Day eight of the civil trial continues against Dr. Paul Jones, who’s accused of using his own sperm to inseminate patients, instead of using anonymous donor sperm.

The lawsuit filed in Oct. 2019, alleges Jones promised his patients the sperm would come from anonymous donors, but then he would use his own without the patients’ knowledge or consent.

The lawsuit comes after a woman named Maia Emmons-Boring took an at-home DNA test she received from Ancestry.com. A month after she sent the test back, she says she got a call from another woman through Ancestry.com saying their results showed them to be half-siblings.

Emmons-Boring claims that her mother, Cheryl Emmons went to Dr. Jones in the late 1970s to seek help with infertility and he artificially inseminated her seven times with his own sperm and she became pregnant twice with the children being born in 1980 and 1985.

As part of day eight in the trial, the jury heard expert witness testimony from Dr. Donald Aptekar, a board certified OBGYN, from Denver. Dr. Aptekar testified about the procedures many doctors followed during the 1970s and 1980s when it came to treating infertility with “fresh” sperm samples from anonymous donors. In Dr. Aptekar’s case, he said one of the conditions of artificially inseminating his patients was the patient was not allowed to know, or try to find out who the anonymous sperm donor was and donors likewise would not be allowed to know who the recipients were.

Dr. Jones, now in his eighties, renewed his medical license when he turned 80. But shortly after the lawsuit was filed in 2019, he surrendered that license.

The trial is expected to wrap up April, 29.

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