Subject: HIV-Tainted Blood Verdict Reversed
Date: Published: 4/13/92 (65 lines)
Source: Wall Street Journal. Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc.

    Law -- Legal Beat:
    Taking Apart Computer Hardware
    May Violate Copyright, Judge Says
    ----
    By Junda Woo and Ellen Joan Pollock
    Staff Reporters of The Wall Street Journal

[147 lines irrelevant to AIDS omitted.  -- sysop]

    FIRST VERDICT against blood bank in AIDS case is reversed.
 A California appeals court overturned a jury verdict against
 a blood bank accused of giving HIV-tainted blood to a
 patient.  The decision could make it even more difficult to
 win lawsuits involving blood transfusions that transmitted
 the AIDS virus in the early 1980s, before tests to screen
 blood for HIV became available.
    Dozens of similar cases have been brought throughout the
 country.  Usually, they are settled out of court without
 trial.  This case involved Michael Osborn, of Sacramento, a
 child who received HIV-tainted blood in February 1983 during
 open-heart surgery shortly after birth to repair a congenital
 defect.  He died last year.
    In the suit, Michael's parents alleged that Irwin Memorial
 Blood Bank of San Francisco was negligent in its screening
 and testing procedures and that it fraudulently told the
 family it had a policy against accepting blood donations from
 relatives and friends for specific patients.
    The jury in 1988 absolved Irwin of the negligence claim
 but ordered it to pay $750,000 in damages and medical
 expenses for not allowing the Osborn family to select blood
 donors for their son.  Such donations are more expensive and
 difficult for blood banks to administer, but the procedure
 reduced the risk of transmitting AIDS-tainted blood before
 testing became available.  The trial judge later reduced the
 damages to $416,000.
    The appeals court in San Francisco ordered a new trial on
 the fraud allegation because of an improper evidentiary
 ruling.  The Osborns, according to the appeal court, should
 have been required to prove not only that Irwin disallowed
 directed donations, but that the family would have been
 successful in finding Michael's rare blood type among
 relatives and friends.  The trial judge, instead, ruled out
 any evidence about Michael's blood type.
    The appeals court did, however, uphold the jury's finding
 that Irwin wasn't negligent.  The Osborns' lawyer, Michael
 Moriarty of San Francisco, had argued that the blood bank
 should have done more donor screening through hepatitis-B
 antibody testing on all units of blood it accepted.  At the
 time, it was thought that the hepatitis antibody was an
 indicator of AIDS.  
    But Irwin's attorney, Duncan Barr of San Francisco,
 successfully argued on appeal that Irwin's practice was
 prevalent throughout the industry at the time, and that many
 of the safety measures that plaintiffs' lawyers contend
 should have been used weren't known then.
    Mr. Moriarty said he expects to appeal the decision to the
 California Supreme Court.

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