Agence France Presse reports via InterAksyon.com that a 60-year-old Japanese man who grew up poor recently won a 38 million yen ($374,000) lawsuit against the hospital which mistakenly switched him with another baby in 1953-- a boy who ended up living a more privileged lifestyle for nearly six decades.
According to the report, the two babies lived starkly different lifestyles as a result of the hospital's blunder. The poor man, an unmarried truck driver, "was raised on welfare by his non-biological mother who also supported older siblings after her husband passed away." In contrast, the baby he was switched with grew up "as the eldest of four brothers in a wealthy family where siblings enjoyed a lavish lifestyle including private tutors."
"The decades-old mistake was uncovered when the wealthy family’s three younger brothers had DNA testing done on their oldest sibling-who looked nothing like them-after their parents died," the article said. This week, a Tokyo district court ordered the hospital to pay the multimillion-yen amount of damages to the truck driver and his real siblings.
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