Not the sort of thing a woman usually wants as a "VD gift"

That's what they all say:

Karly Rossiter filed the lawsuit against Alan Evans, of Muscatine, claiming he told her he was free of any sexually transmitted diseases before they began dating in December 2004. A few days after they had sex, Evans asked Rossiter if she had been tested for the human papilloma virus, which causes genital warts.

The lawsuit alleged that she learned in 2005 that she might have the virus and later began showing symptoms.

This ruling could be problematic for a few reasons. In general, HPV cannot be tested in men because only a few strains manifest symptoms in men. There is also no way of knowing, in general, where a woman got HPV from because it could just as easily be her own mother during birth as from a partner.

Now, in general it is perfectly reasonable to make the transmission of STDs a civilly actionable offense when the person who has the STD conceals that fact or deceives someone. It would also be appropriate in the case of something like AIDS or Hepatitis C to argue that such a transmission could constitute a de facto desire to commit homicide since the person who has the disease knows fully well, in a pre-meditated fashion, that their actions will result in the death of that individual. If they die from another cause, it's no less fair to call them a murderer than to suggest that someone is still a murderer if they mortally wound their victim but their victim stumbles out into traffic and is hit and killed by a car.

Still, I am skeptical that the judge took into consideration all of the details surrounding HPV when deciding this case.