AIDS, lies and how the Illinois Supreme Court might rule

SPRINGFIELD -- A potentially precedent-setting ruling in a case pitting morality against legality over the issue of AIDS is expected today by the Illinois Supreme Court.

On the surface, the case boils down to whether a Cook County woman is entitled to collect a judgment of more than $2 million she received against her fiance's parents for allegedly misleading her about their son's health. He ultimately died of AIDS, and she's also infected.

Had the parents been honest, the woman claims, she would have sought testing, learned she was HIV-positive, promptly sought treatment and possibly stopped her infection before it progressed and irreversibly destroyed her immune system to the extent is has.

In their defense, the parents claim they too didn't know their son had AIDS until his final months. And AIDS activists say if the parents had spoken up, they would have violated a state law protecting the confidentiality of those with AIDS and HIV. In fact, the victim is kept anonymous in the court case, referred to only as Jane Doe because of confidentiality laws.

The question then becomes whether the parents, if they indeed knew their son had AIDS, had a legal responsibility to tell his fiancee -- or at least not mislead her -- that outweighed their son's legal right to have his HIV status remain confidential.

The pending decision could have far-reaching legal and moral implications. Last year, the Daily Herald covered the Supreme Court arguments in what may be the first case of its kind in the country.

Here's a summary of the case and what's at stake with the pending decision:

Legal precedent aside, the case itself is a showdown of nightmares: Parents confronted with the reality of outliving a child. A single woman who found love only to learn the man she hoped to marry kept a secret that would not only kill him, but possibly her as well.

Attorneys for the family say if the verdict against their clients is upheld, it will open a legal Pandora's box that could result in any lie becoming the basis of a lawsuit.

During last year's arguments before the state's high court, David Novoselsky, an attorney for the family, said if indeed the parents misled the woman, it was wrong. But that's a moral issue for them to reconcile, not the Illinois Supreme Court.

"Is it a sin? Yes. We're now converting it into law," Novoselsky told the Illinois justices. "This is a hard case because it is a tragedy. But the person who caused injury here is (the fiance), not his parents."

"If this is converted from a moral duty to a legal duty ... we're now getting into theology," he said. "This court ... should not enforce morality."

Illinois Supreme Court Chief Justice Bob Thomas had a similar perspective in his line of questioning.

"Are we going to open up every human relationship to litigation?" asked Thomas.

But the attorney representing the former fiancee who sued the parents rejected such arguments as legal red herrings that detract from the underlying issues. Alyssa Campbell argued that the law has long-held people responsible for what they say, especially if their lies result in harm.

"Once you speak, you must be truthful," Campbell told the court.

According to court records, the two met via a personal ad in April 1996. He was 41. She was 44. She'd tested negative for HIV in 1991 as part of an insurance physical. He'd apparently known since 1992 that he was HIV-positive but didn't tell her.

After a few months of dating, they were in love, talking of marriage and babies, and first engaged in unprotected sex in August 1996.

That same month, she first noticed her fiance appearing unsteady on his feet. The next month, she experienced flu-like symptoms, often associated with the first onset of HIV infection. She did not go to a doctor.

Over the following months and years, her fiance's health would dramatically worsen while the woman was repeatedly told by his parents, one of whom was a prominent food and drug attorney, that he was suffering from heavy-metal poisoning and, later, Lyme disease. The parents were handling their son's care and paying his bills.

Meanwhile, the woman's health also deteriorated. By 1999, her hair had begun falling out, her gums were bleeding and sores were developing on her skin, all of which she attributed to the stress of caring for her ailing fiance.

It wasn't until November 1999 that the woman, at a doctor visit with her fiance, learned that the man she'd been with for more than three years was HIV-positive. He died a month later. She also tested positive, and medical professionals testified she likely was infected back in 1996.

She claims she once said to her fiance's mother that, "If I didn't know better, I would say he looked almost like a man who has AIDS. Could he have AIDS?" The woman said her fiance's mother assured her he did not.

The mother denied that conversation ever occurred. She and other family members also denied a former son-in-law's claim that he heard the parents talking about their son having AIDS in late 1998, a year before the fiancee learned.

Initially, the woman sued her fiance's estate only to find he had nothing. She then sued his parents, acknowledging that it was their son who infected her, probably before she even met them, but their lies caused her infection to remain undetected and untreated and led to full-blown AIDS.

Ultimately, a Cook County jury held the parents liable and awarded the woman $2 million. An appeals court overturned the verdict and award, saying it was unrealistic for the woman to base health decision on her fiance's parents, who weren't medical professionals, especially when she could easily have been tested.

"One cannot truly expect her fiance's parents to reveal a secret that their son would not," the appeals court said in the ruling that set the stage for the case to go before the Illinois Supreme Court.