Portland Disease Date Lawsuit, Jury Awards Woman $900,000
A woman in Oregon was awarded $900,000 after she claimed that a man she had a sexual encounter with did not inform her that he had an incurable sexually transmitted disease.
In a case that was the first of its kind in Oregon a 49-year-old woman, who filed the suit under a pseudonym, claimed that the 69-year-old man she met using the online dating website eHarmony failed to inform her of his condition, according to KGW.com.
The woman told jurors as a result of contracting genital herpes she suffered severe depression and anxiety as well as emotional distress.
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Her lawyer, Randall Vogt, further explained that due to her condition she lost her job and any hope of finding a husband.
"It made her feel like she needed to isolate herself from society, and she became a recluse," he said. "She was interested in finding a husband but pretty much dropped efforts in that direction because of the herpes."
The defendant, whose name was also withheld, is a retired dentist who stated that he did not know his condition was contagious because he was not experiencing an outbreak.
But the jury felt the man had an obligation to inform a consenting partner of his condition regardless of whether he thought it was contagious.
The suit cited instances of negligence and battery. With regard to negligence, the jury found the man 75 percent responsible and the woman 25 percent. The jurors also found the defendant committed battery through his action of intentionally engaging in an activity that caused harm to his date, as reported by KGW.com.
"We all felt he should have told her," Noah Brimhall, one of the jurors, told The Oregonian newspaper. "He had the responsibility to tell her."
According to the Centers of Disease Control, nearly one out of every six adults in the United States has genital herpes and can be given to someone even if there are no visible symptoms.
