When celebrity hairstylist Andre Chreky was hit with a paternity suit by a woman he had not been involved with for years, he was certain he couldn't lose. Paternity tests are DNA tests, he thought, and DNA tests never lie. So he unhesitatingly submitted a swab of cells. To his shock, he was positively identified as the father, with a 99.99 percent certainty.
But last April, after a two-year legal battle that cost Chreky $800,000, the Fairfax, Virginia, circuit court found that human error in the testing was probable and that the DNA results were incorrect.
"It hurt my family; my business," Chreky says. "My life will never be the same."
DNA testing is thought of as definitive. If there is a match between two samples, then identification is certain. Some DNA experts place the probability of an error at one in a billion. But recent cases in which paternity ...
