Jury Weeps but Doesn’t Award Money to Widow in AIDS Case : Health: Dorothy Polikoff’s husband acquired AIDS by transfusion and then passed the disease on to her before he died.

Jurors wept Friday morning as they told Dorothy Polikoff that they wouldn’t make a hospital compensate her for the death of her husband from AIDS, a disease he acquired by transfusion and then passed on to her before he died in 1987.

The verdict came after a three-week trial during which Mrs. Polikoff, 65, had rejected a $500,000 settlement offer from UC San Diego Medical Center.

She settled out of court for an undisclosed amount with the San Diego Blood Bank, which provided the transfused blood.

“The case was a tragic one, and the jurors were crying when they gave their verdict,” said Jeffrey B. Barton, attorney for UCSD. “But they were able to put aside their feelings of sympathy and go on what was known at the time, and the fact that (UCSD was) doing everything that could be done to protect patients.”

Polikoff’s lawyer, Michael Moriarty of Walnut Creek, said he was shocked by the verdict and plans to appeal.

“It came out loud and clear that there were options back in January, 1984, to those who were getting operations with transfusions,” said Moriarty, clearly dejected by the case’s outcome. “You could donate your own blood, or you could designate who you wanted to donate for you. . . . The person who was in charge of passing on those options to the physicians, so they could advise the patients, refused to divulge that information to the physicians.”

Polikoff, who has tested positive for the HIV virus that causes AIDS and now suffers the diarrhea and weight loss that are pre-AIDS symptoms, cried quietly at her home Friday afternoon after learning the news earlier in the day.

“I wonder what the world is getting to,” she said in a voice muffled by tears. “Have we lost all sense of integrity, dignity? Is life meaningful? Would they like to wear these shoes?

“It’s a beautiful world, but we don’t make it better if we don’t speak out when something’s wrong. I failed. I failed miserably. And that’s what hurts.”

The case centered on the issue of whether UCSD Medical Center had a responsibility in 1984--months before the AIDS virus was isolated or a detection test developed--to give transfusion patients alternatives to getting blood from a blood bank. Although the detection test had not been developed yet, Moriarty said, there was enough evidence that AIDS was commonly associated with people who had hepatitis so that blood testing should have been done.

William Polikoff died at the age of 70 in December, 1987. He had undergone cardiac surgery at UCSD in 1984, during which he received four units of plasma and five units of red cells from nine different donors. It was two years later that the Polikoffs became aware of the danger of getting AIDS through transfusions, and were tested.

Barton contended successfully during a three-week trial that UCSD had met the “standard of care” for transfusions at the time of Polikoff’s operation.

Moriarty countered that UCSD should have offered William Polikoff the option of storing his own blood in advance of the operation, or getting blood from family members. He also contended that UCSD should have warned the Polikoffs later to practice safer sex techniques, so Mrs. Polikoff would not be infected.

UCSD’s $500,000 settlement offer was turned down “because, I think Mrs. Polikoff is entitled to far greater compensation for the loss of her husband of 41 years,” Moriarty said.

Barton said the offer had been made because San Diego Superior Court Judge Michael I. Greer, who presided over the trial, had made a procedural ruling that would have allowed the jury to award an unlimited amount to Mrs. Polikoff.

“You combine that with the sympathy factor, and it creates a financial exposure,” Barton said. “The thing that scared me about the case was that they wouldn’t be able to see past Mrs. Polikoff, the tragedy of what happened to her.”

Disappointed, she said Friday that she just doesn’t understand the jury’s verdict.

“How these jurors could make that decision is beyond me,” she said. “To say that there’s no consideration for my care after all this agony of years--I don’t understand the public. I don’t understand.”

Moriarty said a second lawsuit, against the Veterans Administration Medical Center in San Diego, will go to trial in San Diego on Dec. 11. It was V.A. doctors who referred William Polikoff to UCSD for treatment.

The Polikoff case is one of about 200 filed around the country because of AIDS caused by contaminated blood products. More are expected as the 3,600 people across the United States that have acquired the disease from transfusions become symptomatic.

Early cases resulted in smaller, out-of-court settlements. More recently, there have been large verdicts, including a $28.7-million judgment in June against a hospital and doctors on behalf of a 5-year-old Phoenix boy. In August, Los Angeles attorney Martin Berman won a $3 million lawsuit for an 10-year-girl.