Man fined $12.5mn for infecting wife with HIV on honeymoon

LOS ANGELES: A man who infected his ex-wife with HIV has been ordered to pay her $12.5mn. A California judge ruled the man acted with fraud and malice when he passed on the AIDS virus, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Known only as John B, he was ordered to pay his former wife, Bridget B, $5mn in future loss of earnings and $7.5mn in general damages. The ruling capped a six-year legal battle between the couple that begun when Bridget B filed suit against her husband claiming he had infected her with HIV shortly after they married in 2000.

According to her suit, the wife discovered she had the AIDS virus two months after the couple’s honeymoon. Her husband had claimed to be healthy and monogamous and at first she feared she was to blame.

But she later discovered her husband had had unprotected sex with gay men before and during their marriage. She concluded he had infected her as she had not had unprotected sex with anyone else since testing negative for HIV in 1995. Bridget sought compensation for fraud, negligence and emotional distress, claiming her husband should have known he had HIV.

The case led to a 2006 California Supreme Court ruling stating that people with the virus that causes AIDS have a right to sue the sexual partner who infected them if that person either knew or suspected they had HIV and failed to warn them of the risk.

John B had argued that it was his ex-wife who infected him.