To the fertility patients whose embryos were destroyed at an Alabama clinic, the circumstances must have been shocking. Somehow, a patient in the hospital housing the clinic had wandered into a storage room, pulled the embryos from a tank of liquid nitrogen and then dropped them on the floor — probably because the tank was kept at minus 360 degrees. The bizarre incident was at the center of lawsuits filed by three families that eventually reached the Alabama Supreme Court. On Friday, a panel of