Indiana man wins suit against doctors who disclosed his HIV status |
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Seattle Gay News
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posted Friday, July 9, 2010 - Volume 38 Issue 28 Indiana man wins suit against doctors who disclosed his HIV statusby Mike Andrew - SGN Staff Writer An Indiana man identified in court documents only as M.O. won a $1.25 million judgment against doctors who disclosed his HIV status in public documents. M.O. claimed that Internal Medicine Associates included the fact that he is HIV-positive in collection claims they filed in 2004. IMA was attempting to collect a $326 past due medical bill. IMA had given the information to their collection attorneys who then sent it to collection agents, and included it in a court filing demanding payment. Because the documents are public information, anyone could have accessed the filing and discovered M.O.'s HIV status. At the conclusion of the three-day trial, the six jurors deliberated two hours before returning with a judgment against IMA. The July 1 court ruling was the result of years of court hearings, depositions, and medical board rulings in favor of M.O. M.O. testified in court that IMA had told more people he was HIV-positive than he had. His attorney, Neal Eggeson, said a medical panel reviewed the case and determined the medical profession has an obligation to protect a patient's privacy. "The entire case is about protecting his privacy and not having people in the Bloomington community know his status," Eggesen, said. "He was asking the jury to at least give him enough to move somewhere else. He does not feel comfortable here anymore." Attorneys for IMA argued that since M.O. had disclosed his status to at least one other person besides family members or sexual partners, they had no obligation to pay anything for telling a non-relevant party. IMA attorneys also demanded to know how many sexual partners M.O. had so they knew how many people he told before having sex. Indiana state law requires HIV-positive people to disclose their status to sex partners. Last month, for example, a 19-year-old woman was arrested after a man she met on MySpace charged that she had failed to disclose she is HIV-positive before they had unprotected sex. After the trial, Eggeson told reporters that his client can now move to another location and start his life over, as he desires. Eggeson expects an IMA appeal, however. "I would be shocked if there was not one," he said. The Indiana Supreme Court previously dismissed an HIV privacy suit in 1998. In that case, an HIV-positive man disclosed his status to ambulance attendants as he was being taken to a hospital. They informed hospital workers, one of whom revealed the information to her husband who was also employed there, and working with the patient. He, in turn, informed other co-workers, and one of them informed two other people who were not involved in treating the patient. That individual was sued for unnecessarily disclosing the patient's HIV status, but the court ruled that revealing the information to only two individuals did not amount to publicizing it. |
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