A Minnesota woman who transmitted an STD to a man she was seeing has been awarded $120,000 in a civil trial after the court found that the man went above and beyond in his harassment of her after finding out he had herpes.
Knowing Transmission Of Communicable Disease
The incident began back in 2021, when a Twin Cities man and woman matched on Tinder. He was 51 and she was 25, and they had a months-long romance of texting, talking and sex until the man noticed a lesion on his groin area and face. He went to the doctor and found that he was positive for HSV-1, or Herpes Simplex Virus. upon learning this information, the man went to the St. Louis Park Police in hopes of getting his ex-lover charged with third-degree criminal sexual conduct, coercion, first-degree sexual assault and knowing transmission of a communicable disease.
The man also began sending flyers to a downtown Minneapolis apartment building where the woman lived. The flyers included the woman’s name, picture and a physical description, and it listed a phone number to call to prevent the spread of a “serious disease.” The flyer also said the woman was a serial predator who was committing sexual assault and had potentially infected more people.
An investigator talked to the woman, and she provided password access to her health records. It showed that she had been getting tested annually, and there was no evidence she had ever tested positive for HSV-1. The investigator then declined to bring forward a case.
However, the man would not stop pestering the woman. He sent personal letters to ex-boyfriends, hired a private investigator and tried to go directly to the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office and a Hennepin County judge. He also sent another batch of flyers. Despite his efforts to get the woman charged, his actions led to him being criminally charged for harassment. As his case was moving forward, he filed a civil case against the woman.
At trial, the man said he knew the exact moment it happened, and the woman claimed she never had any symptoms of infection. At this point she had now tested positive for HSV-1. Based on other testimony during the trial, the jury came to a conclusion that the woman lied by telling the man she didn’t have herpes, but ruled that she didn’t knowingly infect him with HSV-1. They found that he was not harmed by her actions and awarded him nothing. However, the jury ruled that he defamed the woman by sending letters about her into the public, and that his behavior was “so extreme and outrageous that it passed the boundaries of decency,” and ordered him to pay the woman $120,000. The man was also convicted of gross misdemeanor harassment, which he has since appealed to the Minnesota Court of Appeals.
It’s a wild story from start to finish, and it seems like both parties likely wish they had never met the other given how everything has shaken out. Hopefully both parties can simply try to pick up the pieces and forget about the other as they move forward in life.
For help with a criminal matter in the greater Twin Cities area, connect with Avery and the team at Appelman Law Firm today at (952) 224-2277.
