In 1985, the mother of a Client was hospitalized with a condition known as Thrombocytopenia (low platelet count) – and unfortunately eventually passed away. Historically, medicine treated this condition with steroids and found it an effective treatment. However, the decedent’s physician, in this case, ordered a blood transfusion. At this time, the AIDS virus had only been discovered in 1983, and there was no rapid screening test available to test blood transfusions for the HIV virus. The University of Southern California began a safety program consisting of taking blood sample splits from each transfusion to be tested at a later time. USC took a split from the blood transfusion given to the mother of Tom’s Client.
Approximately 2 years after the mother received a blood transfusion, she was contacted by representatives of USC to inform her that the blood she had received was tainted with the HIV virus. Shortly thereafter, the Decedent was diagnosed with the HIV virus and her husband was diagnosed with the HIV virus - a tragic error. Tom was able to prove that the doctors committed medical malpractice by ordering a blood transfusion at that time, when the mother had a prior history of successful treatment of her Thrombocytopenia condition with steroids.
The case was eventually resolved against the defendant physician and hospital. However, at the time that the mother’s case was settled on behalf of her husband and two children, Tom offered to settle the prospective wrongful death case of the father for the sum of $70,000 since it was the same transfusion that had caused the father’s AIDS. Two years later, after the father died, the wrongful death action of the two children was settled for $200,000.