Kyle Bylin and Jeremy Morrison have filed a lawsuit in state court after DNA tests showed they were switched at birth 38 years ago at Unity Medical Center in Grafton, North Dakota. The case turns a long-buried family mystery into a new legal fight over what happened in the delivery room and who, if anyone, was responsible.
Bylin said the discovery began with an at-home DNA test he took during a Christmas gift-exchange. That result led him to a biological aunt on a genealogy platform, and Morrison was tested soon after. He later said the results left no room for doubt. The two men were the only babies born on Jan. 26, 1988, at Unity Medical Center, making the switch a narrow question of which infant went home with which family.
Bylin said he still has the hospital bracelet that misidentified him as Kyle Bylin. That small piece of plastic now sits inside a much larger dispute, one that has already drawn in the families who raised the men and the hospital where their lives were separated at birth. Newton and Keith Bylin raised Kyle as their own, while Morrison grew up with Elizabeth O'Toole and Terry Morrison and still thinks of them as his parents.
Unity Medical Center says there is no evidence its staff were responsible for the switch. The hospital also says the medical and staffing records that might have clarified what happened no longer exist, and that no members of the delivery team from that time are still employed there. That leaves the lawsuit with a basic but difficult burden: proving a hospital-caused switch from a night nearly four decades ago, when the paper trail the hospital says could have answered the question has gone missing.
The discovery did not erase the family bonds that formed over 38 years. Evelyn Newton said Kyle is still her son, but she also said she feels robbed of the life she should have had with her biological son, pointing to the years that cannot be replayed. Morrison put it another way, saying a DNA test is not going to take away 38 years of memories. What the lawsuit can still do is force a court to decide whether the mistake was simply a mystery of the past or a failure the hospital must answer for now.
