"Ten years ago, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruled that a wife who sued her philandering husband for giving her HPV, the human papillomavirus, was not entitled to a judgment largely because he had no physical symptoms of HPV infection, had no medical diagnosis of HPV infection and could not have known he was infected — if he ever was.
Proof is hard to come by for HPV infection because though some strains can cause cancer and warts, more often there are no symptoms. The virus is typically cleared by the body without the infected person knowing he or she ever had it. Plus, most sexually active adults are exposed to it at some point in their lives.
But in a civil lawsuit, the level of proof is lower than it is in a criminal case. Rather than “beyond a reasonable doubt,” it is “preponderance of the evidence.”
Now fast forward to August, when a jury in Iowa awarded $1.5 million to young woman after she claimed that her boyfriend, a dentist, had infected her with HPV even though her lawyer agrees that it is “virtually impossible” to definitively prove it.
Given that, denying you have had an STD, or even that you have one now, is a minefield, says Jeff Tronvold, the Cedar Rapids attorney who represented the young woman in Iowa.
“If 75 percent of people are exposed to HPV, then everybody should know they had it at one point,” he says. If you deny it to a partner, “you have already met, in my opinion, the civil burden [of proof] because you just lied. You should say, ‘I have no signs, but I cannot tell you I never had it.’ This could change the way we all date.”
Human papillomavirus, or HPV, is a common cause of sexually transmitted disease. In some cases, the virus can form warts on various parts of the body, including the feet, hands and genitals. There are more than 100 types of HPV, most of which are harmless. Of these 100, more than 30 types are sexually transmitted. Some types of HPV that cause genital infections can also cause cervical cancer and other gynecological cancers.
A few days before the Iowa verdict came in, the wife of a New York investment banker filed a lawsuit against her husband for a reported $25 million, accusing him of giving her HPV and arguing that he contracted it from prostitutes on business trips. Back in Iowa, Tronvold says he’s been contacted by two more potential plaintiffs who think lovers infected them with an STD.
Who infected whom?
Serious as HPV can be, none of those cases are as heartbreaking as Bridget B.'s.
“Both of them were very successful businesspeople,” explains one of Bridget’s lawyers, Kathleen Grassini. “They met at a convention for [MBA holders] in 1998 and he swept her off her feet.” As their relationship deepened, Grassini alleges, John asked Bridget to stop insisting on condoms during sex, arguing that he was healthy and monogamous. She agreed.
They were engaged on New Year’s Eve, 1999, and had a “blowout” wedding the following summer.
On the honeymoon, Bridget didn’t feel well, and neither did John. After returning, Bridget, who had moved to Los Angeles to be with John, went to her new husband’s doctor. The doctor diagnosed HIV infection and told Bridget that she had brought the virus into the marriage. John was tested and he turned up positive, too. Both now have AIDS.
Bridget was crushed with guilt. Suddenly both her new marriage — and her life — were in danger. “She thought, here is my straight husband and I love him. He could not have done this,” Grassini says. John also told other people that Bridget had given him HIV.
Then Bridget found some e-mails. According to court papers filed in the case, Bridget “learned that before and during their marriage defendant engaged in promiscuous, unprotected homosexual sex and solicited homosexual sex over the Internet.” They were divorced not long after that and Bridget sued, asking for monetary damages."
