US Court Rules: AIDS May Not Be Disabling

By Stephen Page

Harrington Family Lawyers

Disability insurers may be able to cut off benefits to those with AIDS, a US court has ruled.

Charles Jenkins contracted HIV in 1988 and in 1993 stopped work for Price Waterhouse Coopers due to AIDS. He received disability insurance benefits.

After Mr Jenkins went on a holiday from the US to London, his insurer looked at his case again, sent him to doctors, decided that he was capable of sedentary employment, and in 2006 stopped paying.

Jenkins sued Price Waterhouse Coopers and the insurer, but was unsuccessful. The court stated that the insurer could make the decision it had made based on the evidence, and:

“Nevertheless, Jenkins suggests that it is impossible to reconcile the initial determination of disability with the later decision that he could attempt full-time sedentary employment.  At best, Jenkins argues, the evidence showed that his condition was stable. If that condition was grave enough to warrant disability in 1994, why wasn't it sufficient in 2006?

“But Jenkins fails to recognise what [the insurer] (and the general population, it seems) thought HIV and AIDS meant in the early 1990s. That impression was that HIV (and certainly AIDS) brought rapid death. Thankfully, the prognosis has changed--in large measure due to new drugs--both for Jenkins and countless others.  It was not “downright unreasonable” for [the insurer] to shift its position along with that change when the medical evidence supported it.”