U.S. Told to Pay Marine $3.5 Million in AIDS Case
The federal government Tuesday was ordered to pay $3.5 million to a Marine warrant officer who claimed his family contracted AIDS through the ineptitude of doctors at a Navy hospital in Long Beach.
Chief Warrant Officer Martin Gaffney, who is based at the South Weymouth Naval Air Station in Massachusetts, has lost his wife and son to the disease and is infected with the virus.
Gaffney filed a $55-million suit in 1987, claiming that malpractice by Navy doctors caused his wife to contract AIDS, which was passed to other family members. Judge Rya Zobel ruled in Boston last year that doctors at the Navy Regional Medical Center in Long Beach failed to properly treat Mutsuko Gaffney during her pregnancy. Zobel found that because of this negligence, Gaffney delivered a stillborn son and underwent a blood transfusion, during which she was given AIDS-infected blood.
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