NEW YORK — A Brooklyn woman who was “devastated” when a state-sponsored advertisement wrongly suggested she had HIV is getting $125,000 out of the blunder, court records show. The state’s Division of Human Rights used a photograph of Avril Nolan in a 2013 ad touting protections for people who have the AIDS-causing virus.
Emblazoned on the ad were the words “I AM POSITIVE” and “I HAVE RIGHTS” — even though Nolan did not actually have HIV. She said in court that she felt her “world was just falling down around” her when she saw the ad had appeared in the amNewYork newspaper.
Nolan sued the state in 2015 seeking $1.5 million in damages for the embarrassment and distress the ad caused, records say. In a Nov. 8 ruling, Court of Claims Judge Thomas H. Scuccimarra found she had indeed “suffered emotional distress and humiliation” after the ad was published, but gave her a smaller sum than she had sought.
The $125,000 amount is reasonable “(b)ased on the humiliation, mental suffering, anxiety and loss of confidence suffered by this young woman at the beginning of her career, and at the beginning of her growing independence,” Scuccimarra wrote in the decision posted online Tuesday.
Nolan moved to New York City from Ireland in 2010. The picture in the ad was taken for a “street-style” piece to appear in Soma Magazine and the photographer sold it to Getty Images, a photo agency, according to court records.
Nolan learned the offending ad ran in four print publications and three online publications, leading her to fear it could have been seen by “thousands more” people, according to Scuccimarra’s ruling.
Nolan was “terrified” of “running into someone or seeing someone and them thinking, oh, my — that’s Avril, she has HIV,” she said in court.
The photographer got in touch with a Division of Human Rights employee, who said Nolan would have to agree not to hold the agency liable before pulling her photo from future ads, records show.
The agency argued Nolan deserved no more than $25,000 in compensation, as there was no medical evidence she had suffered any psychiatric injury.
A spokeswoman for the Division of Human Rights said the agency does not comment on ongoing litigation.
Nolan also reached a confidential settlement with Getty Images, court records say.
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(Lead image: Photo from Shutterstock)