Marine Wins $3.5 Million in AIDS Suit : Health: The officer blames Navy doctors for his wife’s infection, which was then passed to other members of the family.

BOSTON —  The federal government Tuesday was ordered to pay $3.5 million to a Marine officer who claimed his family contracted AIDS through the ineptitude of Navy doctors.

Chief Warrant Officer Martin Gaffney, who is based at the South Weymouth Naval Air Station, has already lost his wife and son to the disease and is himself now infected with the virus.

“I came out with a victory, but there was a lot that I lost,” Gaffney said after leaving the Federal Courthouse where the award was handed down by a U.S. District Court judge.

Gaffney filed a $55-million suit in 1987, claiming Navy doctors’ medical malpractice caused his wife to contract AIDS, which was then passed to other family members.

Judge Rya Zobel ruled in Boston last year that doctors at the Navy Regional Medical Center in Long Beach failed to properly treat Mutsuko Gaffney during her pregnancy.

Zobel found that because of this negligence, Mrs. Gaffney delivered a stillborn son and underwent a blood transfusion, during which she was given AIDS-tainted blood.

Mrs. Gaffney and the couple’s second son, John, died of the disease, and Gaffney is now infected with AIDS. Of the entire family, only a daughter, Maureene, has escaped infection.

Gaffney held Maureene’s hand as he talked with reporters outside the courthouse. He said the $3.5-million award did not make up for the suffering his family had endured--both from the disease and in struggling to prove their case in court.

“It’s not the amount of the award (although) I hoped that it would be more. It’s the experience that you go through in pursuing justice,” Gaffney said.

“I don’t like the fact that they concluded the first baby (who was stillborn) was not a person. The government must feel they got off pretty lightly,” he said.

Gaffney said he also was angry that the government had not acknowledged its responsibility and instead fought him in court.

“They knew years ago they were responsible for what has happened,” he said. “They should have settled it.”