Medical Clinic Settles AIDS Bias Lawsuit

A Ventura medical clinic where a man infected with the AIDS virus was refused treatment agreed Tuesday to pay $85,000 to settle a federal discrimination lawsuit and pledged to provide evidence that the attending physician who denied him treatment has received additional training on the disease.

Civil rights lawyers said the lawsuit, which was settled the day it was set for trial in federal court in Los Angeles, was the first AIDS discrimination lawsuit filed under the federal Americans with Disabilities Act.

Attorneys for the American Civil Liberties Union and the Western Law Center for Disability Rights, who represented Salvador Fuentes, contend that the settlement delivers a warning to doctors across the nation.

“This sends an important message that AIDS discrimination is unlawful and won’t be tolerated,” said ACLU attorney Jon Davidson.

Fuentes filed the lawsuit in March, 1992, a month after an attending physician at the Ventura Urgent Care Center refused to treat him for a laceration on his hand from a broken glass. He got the cut while he was washing dishes in his Ventura home.

Before he arrived at the clinic, Fuentes called for directions and informed clinic staff that he was HIV-positive and was told he could still receive care, the suit said.

But when he arrived, Dr. Thelma Reich told Fuentes that the clinic would not treat him for his wound, the suit said.

*

Fuentes demanded that Reich put her refusal in writing before he would leave. She wrote on the back of a prescription slip: “This is to inform you that I do not treat patients with HIV-positive in our clinic. Advised to go to County ER for treatment.”

Fuentes was treated at Ventura County Medical Center without incident.

Davidson said Reich’s actions were clearly discriminatory, violating state and federal laws that guarantee people with disabilities access to public places, including hospitals and medical clinics.

“Doctors make these decisions out of ignorance and fear,” Davidson said. “They have to assume everybody they treat is HIV-positive. Fuentes volunteered that he was HIV-positive, many people don’t. We sympathize with the risks involved, but Reich is a doctor and she took an oath to treat the sick.”

In settling the lawsuit, Reich admitted no fault or liability. Her attorneys said she made a sound medical judgment that she was at risk.

“This is definitely not about discrimination,” said James Castle, a Los Angeles attorney representing Reich. “She exercised her medical judgment that she was potentially at risk from his blood.”

Castle contends that at the time the center did not have such things as face shields, moisture-proof aprons and latex gloves that physicians and nurses use to protect themselves from blood carrying the virus that causes acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

*

Reich, her lawyer said, determined that Fuentes’s injuries were not life-threatening and recommended that he go to an emergency room that could treat him safely.

Castle said Reich agreed to settle the lawsuit to avoid a costly and drawn out trial. And Castle denied that the settlement pushed Reich to get training in treating patients with AIDS. He said she sought out such training as part of her continuing education as a physician.

Reich left the center over a year ago, said her attorney, due to threatening phone calls. She now runs a private clinic in Oxnard.

Reich was also asked to contribute an undisclosed but “substantial amount” of the settlement, attorneys said.