Last year the House of Lords held that parents cannot claim the costs of bringing up a healthy but 'unwanted' child, born as a result of medical negligence - for example, a botched sterilisation. But the court left open the question of what may be claimed when the child is disabled. In two recent cases, the High Court has held that parents may recover the extra costs of the child's disability but not the full costs of its upbringing. In Hardman v Amin, the doctor had failed to diagnose the mother's rubella and warn her of the risk to the foetus, allowing her the option of termination. In the second, Groom v Selby, the doctor had neglected to take a pregnancy test when the mother, after a sterilisation operation, reported that she had missed a period. In that case the child was born not with congenital anomalies or birth injuries but apparently healthy, though harbouring an infection from the birth canal, which subsequently caused her disability.