DUNCAN, Oklahoma – A DNA test taken when they were 55 years old has forever changed the lives of two Oklahoma women and their families.

Jill Lopez and Tina Ennis, now 57, of Lawton and Hobart respectively, were born the same day in Duncan in 1964. They learned in 2019 they were switched at birth at the area hospital, then known as Duncan Physicians and Surgeons Hospital, and spent their lives with each other’s parents.

According to court documents, the switch came to light when Ennis took a 23 and Me DNA ancestry test, but didn’t find anyone related to her, including the woman who raised her. Ennis and the woman who raised her, named Kathryn Jones, of Duncan, along with Lopez, collectively filed a lawsuit in Stephens County against the local hospital, now known as Duncan Regional Hospital.

Ennis, who was born May 18, 1964, discovered the hospital’s mistake in summer 2019 after she received the results of the DNA test. After conducting additional research, which included social media sources, Ennis and Jones found Jill Lopez and believed she might be Jones’ biological daughter instead.

Paperwork shows Ennis’ daughter contacted Lopez to give her the information, and Lopez then took a DNA test, which confirmed in August 2019 she was Jones’ daughter, and the people who raised her — Joyce and John Brister, both of whom are now deceased — were not her parents.

In a joint interview with NBC News, Ennis confirmed she had questions growing up, especially when it came to physical appearance.

“I looked at a picture one day, and it was my two sisters and my mom and me, and I couldn’t find anything on any of those faces that looked like me,” she told NBC News. “There was like no resemblance.”

The Duncan Banner was unsuccessful in its attempts to contact Lopez and Ennis. Tammy Haines, firm administrator and legal assistant with Smith Barkett Law Group, the firm representing the women in the lawsuit, said the women are not engaging in further interviews at this time.

Listed in the suit as the defendants are the estates of R.D. Taylor, M.D., and William Randolph Cheatwood, M.D., both deceased. Also named are John and Jane Does, which include physicians, employees, personnel, and staff, along with the unknown nursing staff and employees.

Since parties involved are deceased, it’s unclear how the switch happened.

The suit lists the case as one of “medical and general negligence, gross negligence, reckless disregard, corporate negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligent infliction of emotional distress, respondent superior, res ipsa loquitur and presumed negligence” because Ennis and Lopez were switched at birth and “deprived of any relationship … love, affection, support and nurturing from their biological parents and families.”

The suit argues Jones raised a daughter who was not her own and was deprived of a relationship with her biological daughter, Lopez.

The suit cites devastation, “mental anguish, emotional distress, anxiety, depression, both physical and mental pain and suffering, economic damages and loss, loss of services, support, and nursing, loss of parental and child companionship and love, destruction of the parent-child relationship, and the deprivation of any parental-child and familial relationships between immediate biological family” as a result of the switch.

Cyndi Crook, executive director with DRH community relations, said that while Duncan Regional Hospital doesn’t comment publicly on pending litigation, the hospital isn’t the same entity that it was back then.

“Duncan Regional Hospital is a not-for-profit corporation that did not come into existence until 1976,” Crook said. “The plaintiffs allege in their lawsuit that the births occurred in 1964 at Physicians and Surgeon Hospital, some 12 years before Duncan Regional Hospital was even in existence. Physicians and Surgeons Hospital was a small, for-profit hospital located in Duncan. Duncan Regional Hospital is not the legal successor to Physicians and Surgeons Hospital, nor was it ever named Physicians and Surgeons Hospital.”  

Plaintiffs in the case each seek in excess of $75,000 in damages. A motion for summary judgment for the defendant, DRH, will take place at 9:30 a.m. March 11, 2022.