1. Could the clinic have done anything to contribute to or cause the baby's condition?

 

The baby was dignosed with trisomy 21, and trinomy 21 was caused by a nondisjunction before the fertilization of the baby. John and Jane went to the clinic after the fertilization, so that means the baby was already going to have the trisomy 21 no matter what. So there is no way that the clinic caused it situation, the cause was still unknown. However, based on all of the conlusive evidences, the clinic had no responsibility for this accident.

 

2. Should the clinic have alerted the couple that someting might be wrong before the baby was delivered? How could the doctors have known that the baby might have been born with Down Syndrome? 

 

No, because John and Jane were given the offer to do a sreening test or diagnostic test, which is required by law to be offered. The clinic kept that law, but John and Jane chose not to do either. As the result, there was no way the clinic could have found out about the Down Syndrome before the delivery; therefore, they couldn't be expected to predict the Down Syndrome. 

 

Conclusion: The clinic didn't cause the Down Syndrome and there was no way to predict it without permission and not to do the tests. The clinic is completely innocent of everything they have been accused of.