Man feared contracting HIV from needle left in the seat pocket. He has sued the airline for $5million

A man travelling from Cairo to Washington, DC, was pricked by a stray hypodermic needle on October 16, 2024, when he reached into the seat pocket. This led him to endure months of stress over whether the needle would make him sick, coupled with medical tests that led to hefty bills. This is according to a $5 million federal lawsuit he filed against EgyptAir, The Independent reported. It describes how the man suffered from “mental distress,” “shock”, and “outrage” over fears that he could have contracted a deadly disease from the needle. The man, who has been mentioned as “John Doe” in the lawsuit, says that he asked the airline to disclose the name of the passenger who was on the seat before him so he could gain clarity from him about the needle. However, he says the airline did not respond to his requests. This led to “months of uncertainty”, affecting him mentally and also his personal life.

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The man feared contracting HIV or hepatitis

The man is a 40-something veteran who states in the complaint that he hoped to contact the previous passenger in good faith "to better determine whether he needed to embark on a months-long regimen of prophylactic injections and therapy" to avoid being infected by HIV, hepatitis or another potentially fatal condition. He states in his complaint that EgyptAir “did not respond to [Doe’s] inquiries, nor provide him with any information necessary to avoid said therapies.” His attorney, Abram Bohrer, said that being in the dark led him to avoid being intimate with his wife until he received complete post-exposure treatment and got the clean chit.

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Bohrer told The Independent that the case shows that "airlines have absolutely perfected the art of dehumanising their customers." He added, "Think about the level of anxiety that this man had to live with, over the course of months, until he got a final result." He filed a complaint against the airline last week. It states that at some point in the 12-hour flight, he put his hand inside the seatback pocket in front of him, and a hypodermic needle punctured his skin, which was "presumably left by a passenger." It led to "physical injury and significant emotional distress,” the complaint states. He says in the lawsuit that EgyptAir is responsible for cleaning the cabin – including the seatback pockets – between flights, and has a duty to “remove any and all hazardous objects that pose a potential risk of harm to subsequent passengers."

The needle injury caused "months of uncertainty about whether he had contracted one or more dangerous and communicable diseases,” “months of painful injections", "mental distress, shock, mortification, fear of sickness and illness, outrage and embarrassment… of possible exposure to HIV, hepatitis and other pathogens", medical costs and the “impact to his marriage.”