What began as a simple at-home DNA test has turned into a life-altering legal battle after two North Dakota men discovered they were accidentally switched at birth 38 years ago. Their families are now suing the hospital where they were born, claiming they were deprived of the lives—and families—they were meant to have.
The astonishing discovery began when Kyle Bylin received a home DNA test during a Christmas gift exchange and decided to take it on a whim. The results led him to a woman identified as his biological aunt through a genealogy website. That connection prompted her nephew, Jeremy Morrison, to submit his own DNA sample, and the findings left no room for doubt.
“That’s when my mind was just completely blown,” Bylin said. “We could have never imagined that it was an actual birth switch that occurred.”
Morrison said he immediately suspected the truth after seeing a photograph of Bylin’s brother, whose appearance closely resembled his own.
According to a lawsuit filed in North Dakota state court last week, Bylin and Morrison were the only two babies born on Jan. 26, 1988, at Unity Medical Center in Grafton. Yet, despite being born just hours apart, each infant was allegedly sent home with the other’s family.
Unity Medical Center has denied that there is evidence its employees were responsible for the mix-up.
However, Bylin—who says he was actually born as Jeremy Morrison—still possesses the hospital identification bracelet that incorrectly identified him as Kyle Bylin.
The search for answers has been complicated by the passage of time. Hospital officials say the relevant medical records have long since been destroyed, making it impossible to determine exactly how the switch occurred.
It has now been two years since the DNA results overturned everything both families believed about their identities. Since then, they have faced emotional reunions, difficult conversations, and painful questions about what their lives might have been.
“Kyle is still my son – that is never going to change,” Evelyn Newton, who raised him as her own, told The Associated Press in a phone interview Friday. “But I feel robbed of the life I should have had with my biological son. You can’t go back and replace 35 years. First steps, driving a car, getting married – how do you make up for that?”
While the hospital acknowledges that the babies were switched at some point, it maintains that no evidence has been found showing that hospital administrators or staff caused the mistake.
“We recognize the profound impact this discovery has had on them and their families,” Unity Medical’s statement says. “Unfortunately, because of the passage of nearly four decades, the medical and staffing records that might have provided additional clarity no longer exist, and no members of the delivery team from that time are still employed by the hospital.”
For Morrison, learning the truth has not changed how he views the parents who raised him, Elizabeth O’Toole and Terry Morrison. He continues to consider them his parents and says he looks back fondly on his upbringing despite the challenges, including his parents’ divorce when he was seven.
“I was loved. I played sports. I did well in school,” Morrison said. “A DNA test is not going to take away 38 years of memories.”
Today, Morrison lives in Colorado City, Colorado, where he works as a welding inspector for a wind energy company. He often wonders how different his life might have been had the switch never happened. He believes he likely would have remained in North Dakota, working alongside his biological father and brother on the family grain farm where Bylin grew up.
Evelyn Newton said she never suspected that Kyle was not her biological son. Although he had dark hair while the rest of the immediate family was fair-haired, there seemed to be a reasonable explanation. Her late husband had relatives with dark hair, and because Newton herself had been adopted, she had little knowledge of her own biological family’s traits.
For Bylin, the revelation has reshaped the way he thinks about the long-running debate over nature versus nurture. After leaving North Dakota to pursue an academic career, he often wondered why he seemed so different from the family with whom he had grown up.
“You’re just kind of shaking your fist, like, how can this be my family? How am I so different from them?” Bylin said. “It turns out that we’re just totally different people, period.”
Both men have since met their biological parents. They described the reunions as heartfelt but understandably awkward. Although they have not yet met one another in person, they have spoken by phone.
“We’ve tried to unite as a group and just recognize that no matter what, there’s different ways that this can be socially messy,” Bylin said. “Everyone’s getting to know people that they didn’t know before.”
Although such cases remain uncommon, the growing popularity of consumer DNA testing has led to a number of similar discoveries around the world. In 2024, two women sued the Norwegian government after learning they had been switched at birth. Two West Virginia men filed suit in 2020 after concluding they had been switched as infants in 1942. DNA testing in Pennsylvania revealed in 2018 that two girls had been switched approximately 75 years earlier, and in 2016 Canadian authorities launched an investigation after evidence showed two Indigenous men in northern Manitoba had been switched at birth in 1975.
Medical experts say mistakes of this kind are now extraordinarily unlikely because of modern technology.
Dr. Jonathan Marron, a pediatric oncologist who also teaches at Harvard Medical School’s Center for Bioethics, said such errors should happen “pretty close to never” today.
“As often as all clinicians, doctors, nurses, social workers, everybody else, gripe about the electronic health records,” the digital backstop is a clear benefit, Marron said.
Attorney Tim O’Keefe said he spent roughly a year attempting to negotiate a financial settlement with the hospital before filing a lawsuit alleging negligence, medical malpractice, and emotional distress. Meanwhile, both families continue trying to adjust to a reality they never expected.
“I know the truth now, but we’re still working to build relationships,” Morrison said. “I mean, it’s not like I can go back in time and rebuild what’s already lost. It’s a work in progress, just like me.”
{Matzav.com}
