$10M Judgment For Teen Who Lost Insurance After He Tested HIV+

A 17 year-old South Carolina boy has been awarded $10M after his insurance company dropped him because he tested HIV positive.

South Carolina’s supreme court has ordered Fortis Insurance to cough up $10 million for wrongly revoking coverage of a 17-year-old college student after he tested positive for HIV. It is the most an insurance company has ever been ordered to pay in a case involving the practice of rescission -- when an insurance company retroactively cancels coverage based on alleged misstatements, often right after diagnoses of life-threatening diseases. Chief Justice Jean Hoefer Toal called the 2002 decision by Fortis Insurance “reprehensible.”

The student tested positive after donating blood. The insurance company decided that he knew about his status before he applied for coverage. Not that that should matter.