Stanley Grzadzinski and his wife planned to keep his condition secret from their teen-aged son and daughter to relieve them from worry until he was on his deathbed, his wife testified yesterday.
"There is such a stigma attached to the word HIV, AIDS," Kathy Grzadzinski said in a suburban Detroit courtroom. "We wanted them to enjoy their life. We wanted to protect them."
But according to their 1996 lawsuit in Macomb County Circuit Court, a clerk at an Arbor Drugs store recognized the prescription drugs that Grzadzinski was getting as being for AIDS. She allegedly told her son that his schoolmates' father had the disease.
"The only people that knew he had AIDS were Stanley Grzadzinski, his wife, one of the grandmothers and a best friend," said the couple's attorney, Christopher Sciotti.
The Grzadzinskis are seeking damages of at least $10,000 from Arbor and the employee for breach of pharmacist-patient confidentiality and emotional distress.
"The problem here is Arbor did not have a written policy on confidentiality," Sciotti said during a break in the trial. "Now they do, in part because of this case."
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