Canada: Hemophiliacs Lose AIDS Legal Fight

A costly legal fight launched by hemophiliacs who claimed tainted blood gave them AIDS has been dismissed by Canada's highest court. The Supreme Court of Canada gave no reasons yesterday for refusing to review an Ontario Court of Appeal judgment that overturned a lower court win for the plaintiffs. "They're devastated," said Ken Arenson, lawyer for three families who brought the case against the Canadian Red Cross Society and may have to cover court costs, expected to top $1 million. "They won the trial and the Court of Appeals took it away from them," he said. "It's just a terrible injustice."

The high court dismissal quashes the first lawsuit to pit families of hemophiliacs against the Red Cross, former manager of the country's blood supply. The high court generally hears cases of national scope that could set precedents, or those that have split lower appeal courts on legal points.

In February 1996, Judy Rintoul of Sarnia and Alma Robb of Ilderton, Ont., -- widows of Gray Rintoul and Wayne Robb -- went to court seeking damages and legal costs. They gave up compensation offers from the Red Cross and the province worth about $140,000 each in order to sue, Arenson said. Their husbands and a third plaintiff, Christopher LeBlanc, alleged they were infected with an HIV-tainted blood-clotting product in 1985 after the Red Cross failed to switch quickly to safer options. Rintoul and Robb, both fathers, died of AIDS-related symptoms in 1995 and 1993 respectively. In 2000, the plaintiffs were together awarded more than $1.5 million in damages in a judgment that found the former blood agency negligent. It also ordered Ottawa to pay 25 percent. Ontario Superior Court Justice Ellen Macdonald blasted the "bureaucratic lethargy" that slowed Ottawa's response to the crisis.

But a three-judge appeal panel overturned that judgment last November, unanimously ruling that regulatory red tape, in Canada and in the United States, caused the real delay in getting heat-treated Factor IX into Canada. It noted the plaintiffs failed to prove exactly when they were infected. The insurer that paid for the Red Cross defense will decide whether to pursue the families for full costs once they are assessed in court Oct. 15.

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