Federal Jury Awards $18.4 Million After Lahey Clinic Doctors Cancel HIV Test, Allowing AIDS to Develop

Sean Stentiford went to Lahey Hospital and Medical Center in Burlington, Massachusetts in 2007 with facial paralysis. He was a gay man and a former paramedic who had been exposed to bodily fluids on the job, and he consented to an HIV test. Neurologist Kinan K. Hreib canceled the test, concluding that Stentiford posed low risk. The samples were never analyzed. Stentiford was not told.

For roughly three years, the infection went undetected. By the time a different physician ordered testing and confirmed a positive result around 2010, the disease had already progressed to AIDS. The immune-system damage that accumulated during that window caused permanent neurological injury. Stentiford, who had built a legal career after leaving paramedicine, could no longer practice law.

Swartz and Swartz attorney David P. Angueira brought the case in federal court, arguing that both Hreib and internist Stephen E. Southard fell below the standard of care. A third physician, infectious-disease specialist Daniel P. McQuillen, was found negligent by the jury but was not held liable for the resulting harm. The core claim was straightforward: the test had been ordered and consented to, the patient had documented risk factors in his chart going back to 2006, and canceling it without notifying him denied him the chance to begin treatment before his immune system collapsed.

After deliberating, the federal jury returned a verdict of $18.4 million. The verdict was reported in June 2018. Both Hreib and Southard subsequently left Lahey Hospital and Medical Center. No public record of a post-verdict reduction or remittitur has been reported.