Can a clinic be liable when an HIV-positive man commits suicide?
A man and his wife go to an in vitro fertilization clinic to have a child. Routine blood tests show that the man has HIV, but the clinic mistakenly fails to inform him of the result.
A year later, the man commits suicide when he learns of his illness as the result of a physical taken for a life insurance application.
Can his wife sue the clinic for wrongful death?
The Idaho Supreme Court answered that question in the affirmative in Cramer v. Slater, reversing a trial judge’s decision that the clinic’s alleged negligence could not be deemed the proximate cause of the man’s death.
What’s important to learn from this case is that the state high court decided that neither the man’s suicide nor the alleged negligence of a second physician necessarily constituted superseding causes that relieved the clinic of liability for its failure to inform the plaintiff’s husband of his positive HIV test.
