Hetrick

BACKGROUND

Plaintiff is a retired professor. Before she met defendant, she had never been married and had borne no children. She testified that she had had relatively few sexual partners, and no reason to think any of them were infected with any sexually transmitted disease (STD). She was particularly concerned about such diseases, and especially herpes, because a brother had nearly died from herpes-related encephalitis. Accordingly, when contemplating possible physical intimacy, her practice was to ask whether the prospective partner had any STDs, specifically including herpes. When one potential suitor acknowledged that he had an STD, plaintiff stopped dating him. Her medical expert opined that, to a reasonable degree of medical certainty, plaintiff was not carrying HSV-2—the virus generally implicated in genital herpes infections—when she met defendant. Defendant cites no evidence to the contrary. Defendant holds both a medical degree and a Ph.D. in molecular biology. In 1981, after a residency at Stanford University in internal medicine, he became a board certified specialist in that field. Since 1983 he has been a member of the faculty at a prominent medical school.1…