Sani v. Institute for Human Reproduction

Opinion

2026 IL App (1st) 252264-U

SECOND DIVISION

August 18, 2026

No. 1-25-2264

NOTICE: This order was filed under Supreme Court Rule 23 and is not precedent except in the limited circumstances allowed under Rule 23(e)(1).

IN THE

APPELLATE COURT OF ILLINOIS FIRST JUDICIAL DISTRICT

LEMNA PARVINI SANI, ) Appeal from the Circuit Court of ) Cook County.

Plaintiff-Appellant, )

)

v. ) No. 2024 L 011014 )

INSTITUTE FOR HUMAN REPRODUCTION, )

) Honorable Anothony C. Swanagan, Defendant-Appellee. ) Judge, presiding.

JUSTICE D.B. WALKER delivered the judgment of the court.

Justices McBride and Ellis concurred in the judgment.

ORDER

¶1 Held: We affirm the judgment of the trial court because plaintiff has not presented a sufficient record to review her claims. Affirmed.

¶2 Plaintiff Lemna Parvini Sani appeals pro se from a trial court order dismissing her complaint against defendant Institute for Human Reproduction (IHR). On appeal, Sani contends that the court’s dismissal with prejudice “rests on impermissible fact-finding and misuse of judicial notice.” For the following reasons, we affirm the judgment of the trial court.

¶3 BACKGROUND

¶4 The record on appeal lacks a report of proceedings or acceptable substitute. Accordingly, the following facts are taken from the limited record before us, which includes the trial court’s orders and docket entries, as well as the pleadings.

¶5 On February 10, 2025, Sani filed her second amended complaint pro se, the operative complaint at issue in this appeal, against IHR. Sani alleged breach of contract, medical negligence, unjust enrichment, and a violation of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA).

¶6 Sani alleged that she and her partner, Abdulmajid Fahoum, “executed” a consent form (entitled, “Process, Risk, and Consent for In Vitro Fertilization”) for in vitro fertilization with IHR on September 28, 2021. Sani attached this form as an exhibit to her complaint. At the bottom of page 11 of the 20-page form, there was a statement that, if the parties opted to freeze eggs or embryos, they had to complete a “Disposition of Eggs or Disposition of Embryos” statement before freezing, which also had to be notarized (the Statement of Disposition). IHR subsequently created and froze three embryos in October 2021 using Sani’s eggs and Fahoum’s sperm.

¶7 On November 29, 2021, Fahoum filed an action in the domestic relations division of the trial court pursuant to sections 703 and 704 of the Illinois Parentage Act of 2015 (750 ILCS 46/703, 704 (West 2026)) to assert his rights with respect to the frozen embryos. Sani’s complaint stated that the purpose of Fahoum’s action was to “destroy the embryos.” Sani alleged that, after having spent “over $200k on legal fees” and “$145k” for three additional failed IVF treatments, she was “forced by incarceration” to agree to have the embryos destroyed.

¶8 Sani alleged that IHR’s consent form was a legally enforceable contract and that IHR’s failure to provide the Statement of Disposition “led directly to [her] litigation, incarceration, emotional distress, and financial loss.” Sani further alleged that IHR’s failure to provide the

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Statement of Disposition constituted medical negligence because its conduct “deviated from [the American Society for Reproductive Medicine] guidelines, case law, and general standards of care.” Sani further alleged that IHR violated HIPAA when it “deliberately removed the patient’s primary contract from the patient’s portal” despite acknowledging that HIPAA did not provide for a private right of action. Finally, Sani asserted a claim of unjust enrichment against IHR, arguing that it would be unjust for IHR to “retain the financial benefits of [her] payments while failing to fulfill the essential medical and contractual obligations associated with the services rendered.” Sani sought compensatory damages of $345,000 and punitive damages of $1,000,000.

¶9 On March 17, 2025, IHR filed its motion to dismiss pursuant to section 2-615 of the Code of Civil Procedure (735 ILCS 5/2-615 (West 2024)). IHR argued that the breach of contract claim should be dismissed because Sani failed to establish how IHR’s purported failure to provide the Statement of Disposition proximately caused the litigation that Fahoum instituted against her. IHR further argued that Sani’s medical negligence claim warranted dismissal because the two written reports Sani included with her amended complaint failed to indicate “with any particularity, how IHR deviated from the standard of care.” Finally, IHR argued that the claims alleging a violation of HIPAA and unjust enrichment were meritless because there was no private right of action pursuant to HIPAA and the unjust enrichment claim alleged the existence of a contract “directly in her unjust enrichment claim.”

¶ 10 On September 29, 2025, the trial court issued an order stating that the matter had come before it for “Oral Argument” on IHR’s motion to dismiss, and that the court was “fully advised in the premise[s].” The court’s order further stated that oral argument was heard on the motion, and it would take the matter under advisement and issue a written ruling.

¶ 11 On October 30, 2025, the trial court issued a written order granting IHR’s motion to dismiss. The court found that “any causal connection between the harm alleged by Sani and the

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absence of the form is conclusively defeated by judicial proceedings of which this court is entitled to take judicial notice.” The court noted that, on November 29, 2021, Fahoum filed an action in the domestic relations division to assert his rights over the embryos fertilized with his sperm and temporarily restrain the movement of the embryos from IHR to another facility.

¶ 12 In support of his request for a temporary restraining order, Fahoum attached a document that both he and Sani purportedly signed “five days before the IHR consent form [sic],” which indicated their election to destroy the embryos if they separated. He represented that his relationship with Sani had ended, and the trial court in the domestic relations matter granted his ex parte emergency temporary restraining order on November 7, 2022.

¶ 13 The parties then entered into an agreed order (in the domestic relations matter) that established terms for the termination of their relationship. Among these terms was an agreement that, to the extent that IHR required the agreement of both parties to destroy the embryos, both Sani and Fahoum would execute the required consent forms within seven days of receipt. The trial court here noted that Sani, however, did not sign the form consenting to the destruction of the embryos and was jailed for contempt of court. Sani eventually did sign the consent form, however, resulting in the vacatur of the contempt order on August 12, 2024.

¶ 14 The trial court reiterated that the domestic relations proceedings “defeat any causal connection between the absence of an IHR disposition form and the harms for which Sani seeks relief.” After rejecting Sani’s claims for unjust enrichment and IHR’s alleged violation of HIPAA, the court granted IHR’s motion and dismissed Sani’s complaint with prejudice.

¶ 15 This timely appeal follows.

¶ 16 ANALYSIS

¶ 17 On appeal, Sani contends the trial court erred in dismissing her complaint with prejudice. Sani argues that the court improperly assumed that a consent form from another clinic (Advanced

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Fertility Center of Chicago (AFCC)) “governed the procedures performed at IHR” and “exceeded The limits of judicial notice by adopting disputed allegations from another case as fact.” Sani asks that this court reverse the court’s dismissal and remand the cause for further proceedings.

¶ 18 Our review of Sani’s appeal, however, is hindered by her failure to fully comply with various rules of our supreme court pertaining to appeals. It is well established that our supreme court rules are not mere suggestions; rather, they have “the force of law, and the presumption must be that they will be obeyed and enforced as written.” Bright v. Dicke, 166 Ill. 2d 204, 210 (1995). Although Sani is a pro se litigant, this status does not lessen her burden on appeal. See Holzrichter v. Yorath, 2013 IL App (1st) 110287, ¶ 78 (holding that pro se litigants “must comply with the same rules and are held to the same standards as licensed attorneys.”).

¶ 19 At the outset, Sani’s brief does not comply with Rule 341(h)(6) (Ill. S. Ct. R. 341(h)(6) (eff. Oct. 1, 2020)), which provides that an appellant’s brief should contain a statement of “the facts necessary to an understanding of the case, stated accurately and fairly without argument or comment, and with appropriate reference to the pages of the record on appeal.” Ill. S. Ct. R. 341(h)(6) (eff. Oct. 1, 2020). Here, the statement of facts in Sani’s brief comprises a scant two pages with no references to the record on appeal. There is no discussion of her complaint or IHR’s motion to dismiss, and she includes a single quotation purportedly from the trial court’s order but without a record citation. Her conclusory, argumentative statements in addition to these defects do not provide this court with “the facts necessary to an understanding of the case.” Id.

¶ 20 The argument section in Sani’s brief is equally deficient. Rule 341(h)(7) provides that the “argument” section of an appellant’s brief “shall contain the contentions of the appellant and the reasons therefor, with citation of the authorities and the pages of the record relied on.” See Ill. S. Ct. R. 341(h)(7) (eff. Oct. 1, 2020). Although there are five sub-arguments in this section, each one comprises as little as two (but no more than five) sentences. In addition, she cites neither

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pertinent legal authority nor the record, again in violation of Rule 341(h)(7). See id. We are particularly troubled by the fact that one of her case citations in her opening brief (as IHR notes) does not exist: “Helm v. Illinois Cent. R.R.” does not appear in any reported case in this state, and the precise citation (again, as IHR points out), “142 Ill. App. 3d 108 (1986),” is for a criminal case entitled, “People v. Hardy,” which again contains no discussion of judicial notice. Although we do not know for certain whether this citation was the result of an artificial intelligence (AI) “hallucination,” Sani should be aware that this court is growing increasingly impatient with the patently improper practice of submitting citations of authority that neither exist nor even arguably support the claim on appeal. See, e.g., Scott v. Illinois Human Rights Comm’n, 2026 IL App (1st) 251462, ¶ 56 (imposing a $15,000 fine on an attorney whose brief contained “10 false citations”). Although Sani is proceeding pro se, she must comply with the same rules and will be held to the same standards as licensed attorneys. See Holzrichter, 2013 IL App (1st) 110287, ¶ 78.

¶ 21 The remaining three citations, although not fictitious, are nonetheless unsupportive. People v. Davis, 65 Ill. 2d 157 (1976), concerns the propriety of taking judicial notice of an alleged probation violator’s prior conviction, and Sani provides no discussion to link this decision to the matter before us. Although Sani also cites McDonald v. Lipov, 2014 IL App (2d) 130401, in her claim concerning judicial notice, the case does not discuss it whatsoever. She again provides nothing to clear up the confusion this court has in reading her brief. Finally, People v. Morgan, 197 Ill. 2d 404 (2001), exceeds 55 pages, but (as with her other citations) Sani provides no specific page number (i.e., “pin cite”) where she believes this decision supports her argument. The case does not appear to discuss “Illinois pleading standards” or the “substitut[ion] of conjecture for evidence,” which she mentions in her brief immediately before the citation.

¶ 22 A reviewing court is entitled to have issues clearly defined with “cohesive arguments” presented and pertinent authority cited. Obert v. Saville, 253 Ill. App. 3d 677, 682 (1993).

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“Arguments that do not comply with Rule 341(h)(7) do not merit consideration on appeal and may be rejected by this court for that reason alone.” Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. v. Sanders, 2015 IL App (1st) 141272, ¶ 43. We will, however, consider her claims with these limitations in mind.

¶ 23 In this case, however, Sani has failed to provide either a report of proceedings or an acceptable substitute for the hearing on IHR’s motion to dismiss. Illinois Supreme Court Rules 321 and 324 require an appellant to provide a complete record on appeal, including a certified copy of the report of proceedings. See Ill. S. Ct. R. 321 (eff. Oct. 1, 2021); Ill. S. Ct. R. 324 (eff. July 1, 2017). If a verbatim transcript is unavailable, the appellant may file an acceptable substitute, such as a bystander’s report or an agreed statement of facts, as provided for in Rule 323. See Ill. S. Ct. R. 323 (eff. July 1, 2017). The burden of providing a sufficient record on appeal rests with the appellant (here, Sani). Corral v. Mervis Industries, Inc., 217 Ill. 2d 144, 156 (2005); Foutch v. O’Bryant, 99 Ill. 2d 389, 391 (1984). In the absence of such a record, we must presume the trial court acted in conformity with the law and with a sufficient factual basis for its findings. Id. at 392. Furthermore, any doubts arising from an incomplete record will be resolved against the appellant. Id.; see also Smolinski v. Vojta, 363 Ill. App. 3d 752, 757-58 (2006) (noting that, “when the record on appeal is incomplete, a reviewing court should actually ‘indulge in every reasonable presumption favorable to the judgment from which the appeal is taken, including that the trial court ruled or acted correctly’ ”) (quoting People v. Majer, 131 Ill. App. 3d 80, 84 (1985)). “This is particularly true ‘when the judgment order states that the court is fully advised in the premises.’ ” Maniscalco v. Porte Brown, LLC, 2018 IL App (1st) 180716, ¶ 30 (quoting Dell’Armi Builders, Inc. v. Johnston, 172 Ill. App. 3d 144, 149 (1988)).

¶ 24 Sani’s central contention on appeal is that the trial court erroneously took judicial notice and relied upon those judicially noticed facts in granting IHR’s motion to dismiss. Without a transcript of the hearing, however, we have no knowledge of what arguments were presented and

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no record of the trial court’s precise statements at the hearing. In particular, we cannot determine whether the trial court improperly took judicial notice or engaged in “impermissible fact-finding,” rendering her claims utterly unfounded. Where, as here, the record is incomplete or does not demonstrate the alleged error, we may not speculate as to what errors may have occurred below. See Foutch, 99 Ill. 2d at 391-92; Smolinski, 363 Ill. App. 3d at 757; see also People v. Edwards, 74 Ill. 2d 1, 7 (1978) (“A reviewing court may not guess at the harm to an appellant * * * where a record is incomplete. * * * Where the record is insufficient or does not demonstrate the alleged error, the reviewing court must refrain from supposition and decide accordingly.”). Under these circumstances, as noted above, we must presume that the court acted in conformity with the law and with a sufficient factual basis for its findings. Corral, 217 Ill. 2d at 156-57. Consequently, we have no basis for disturbing the trial court’s judgment. Foutch, 99 Ill. 2d at 391-92. We must therefore reject Sani’s claims on this basis.

¶ 25 CONCLUSION

¶ 26 Sani has forfeited her claims of error on appeal because she failed to provide this court with a complete record on appeal. Accordingly, we affirm the judgment of the trial court.

¶ 27 Affirmed.