
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, April 27, 1990                   TAG: 9004270236
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: BOSTON                                LENGTH: Medium

COURT: MARINE DUE AIDS DAMAGES

A Marine warrant officer who caught the AIDS virus from his wife after she was fatally infected by a transfusion in a naval hospital is entitled to damages from the government, a federal judge ruled Thursday.

U.S. District Judge Rya Zobel found the government negligent for the infections, which killed Matsuko Gaffney, and her son, John, even though AIDS had not been identified as a disease when she was infected in 1981.

The judge ordered a second trial to determine damages for Chief Warrant Officer Martin Gaffney and his daughter, Maureene, who sued the government for $55 million two years ago.

Maureene, who is 6, is the only family member not infected by the virus.

Gaffney, 40, now at the South Weymouth Naval Air Station 15 miles south of Boston, said in a brief telephone interview that he had expected to win.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Marianne Bowler, who represented the government, and other Justice Department officials did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

Gaffney's lawsuit claimed Dr. John Yeast, an obstetrician at the Long Beach Naval Hospital in California, mishandled Matsuko Gaffney's pregnancy by failing to perform a Caesarean section when she was two weeks late in delivering their first child in September 1981.

The baby eventually was stillborn and Gaffney became infected and lost blood. That was when she was given a transfusion of contaminated blood.

If a Caesarean had been performed in time, the judge said, a blood transfusion would have been unnecessary.

In her ruling, Zobel concluded: "I find that [the government] was negligent in the treatment of Matsuko that she had to be transfused as a direct result of that negligence, and that it was foreseeable in 1981 that a communicable disease could be transmitted through a blood transfusion."

by CNB