Can I Sue Someone for Getting Me Sick?

If you're thinking about filing a personal injury case against someone you think gave you a cold, the flu, norovirus, or some other commonly-spread (and typically minor) illness, this article will explain why that kind of case is almost certain to fail. But if you've been diagnosed with a serious illness or disease that can be linked to someone else's wrongful conduct—including a product manufacturer or health care provider—it might make sense to explore your legal options. Let's dive into the details.

Can I Sue Someone for Giving Me a Cold or the Flu?

You can file a lawsuit against someone for almost anything. As long as you get the right papers filed on time and pay your fee, the court will accept your lawsuit and things will get rolling. Proof and everything else (including motions to dismiss meritless cases) will come later—and that's when a lawsuit over transmission of the flu, a cold virus, and other common sickness is likely to get tossed out of court.

Let's put it a different way: Just because you can sue someone, that doesn't make it a good idea. And that may be the best way to frame the answer here.

Unlike many other situations in which one person's careless conduct causes harm to someone else—like a car accident or a slip-and-fall—the potential person-to-person spread of the flu or the common cold isn't likely to form the basis for a valid lawsuit. So, even if you're convinced that a certain person got you sick, and you try to file a personal injury lawsuit against them in court, that kind of case has almost no chance of succeeding. Let's look at why this might be.

You Almost Certainly Can't Prove Who Made You Sick

Most successful personal injury cases require the person bringing the claim (the plaintiff) to prove that:

• the defendant (the person being sued) was negligent or otherwise did something wrong, and
• there's a provable causal link between that misconduct and the plaintiff's harm.

In the context of a potential lawsuit based on flu or cold infection, establishing personal injury liability would require showing that one identifiable person (the defendant who's being sued) actually passed the infection onto another identifiable person (the plaintiff). This kind of proof is impossible to come by.

You can certainly establish, through testing and diagnosis, that you've developed the flu, a cold, or other common illness. But even if you could somehow convince the person you're suing to submit to medical testing, and the results show evidence of the same illness you have, you simply won't be able to make the last, crucial leap: showing that, out of the thousands of people walking around sick during cold and flu season, the defendant is the one who infected you.

A Lawsuit Over the Flu or a Cold Just Isn't Worth It

Bringing a personal injury lawsuit to court costs time and money. Even if you could theoretically prove your case, unless you can show that the resulting illness ended up causing you significant harm ("damages" in the language of the law), it's just not worth it to pursue this kind of case.

A bout with a cold or the flu doesn't usually result in anything more than a few days of discomfort and involuntary down time. Maybe you bought some over-the-counter medication and a few boxes of tissue, and you burned a few PTO days. That's not enough of a reason to go to court, especially when doing so means you're almost certain to see your lawsuit get thrown out.

These are two big reasons why we never saw a wave (or even a slight ripple) of personal injury lawsuits over COVID-19 infections, amidst all the chaos and uncertainty of that unprecedented time. Even with the coronavirus being so prevalent in so many communities, being so easily passed from person to person, and being so much more serious than a cold or the flu, lawsuits over COVID-19 never became a thing. It's the same with the flu, the common cold, norovirus and other easily-transmitted illnesses.

When Does It Make Sense to Sue Over Illness or Disease?

We've covered why it probably doesn't make sense to sue over transmission of a common virus. But there are a number of situations in which a lawsuit over an illness might be justifiable, including:

• diagnosis of an illness or disease linked to harmful chemicals or a dangerous product
• illness, infection or worsening of a health condition caused by sub-standard medical care (medical malpractice) or unsanitary conditions, and
• infection with a sexually-transmitted disease.

Suing Over Health Problems Caused by Products and Chemicals

These are probably the most common (and most legitimate) kinds of personal injury cases involving illness. Every day we see headlines linking consumer products, medications, and chemicals to illness and disease. Roundup weed killer, hair relaxers, PFAS ("forever chemicals"), Johnson's baby powder, and asbestos are just a few examples.

There's an entire legal theory (called "product liability") devoted to cases where a product has been designed or manufactured in a way that poses an unreasonable health and safety risk to consumers. Learn more about dangerous products and the law.

Lawsuits Over Medical Malpractice or Unsanitary Conditions

When a doctor or other health care provider makes an unreasonable mistake in treating a patient, and the patient's condition is made worse as a result, there could be a case for medical malpractice. Get the details on medical malpractice cases.

Similarly, if unsanitary conditions at a hospital or other health care facility cause a patient to develop a "healthcare-associated infection" like methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), there may be a valid path to a lawsuit.

An offshoot of these types of cases—related to unsanitary conditions—are lawsuits over illnesses aboard cruise ships and food poisoning.

Can I Sue Someone Who Gave Me an STD?

The answer here is a firm "maybe." These cases don't typically rely on the mere spread of the sexually-transmitted disease (STD) itself, from one sexual partner to another. Instead, they're usually based on:

• an intentional act (sexual intercourse)
• one partner's intentional misrepresentation or failure to disclose that they have an STD, and
• the other partner's later diagnosis of that same STD.

There's also a much easier-proven causal link between the defendant's wrongdoing and the corresponding harm to the plaintiff in STD transmission cases, as compared with the flu/cold scenarios we covered earlier. That being said, personal injury lawsuits based on STD transmission are still tough to prove.

Learn more about legal claims for harm caused by transmission of a sexually-transmitted disease (STD).

Liability for Misbehavior During a Public Health Emergency

So far we've talked about one person's (or business's) liability for making someone else sick. But it's also important to understand other kinds of legal liability related to health and wellness. For example—and as we learned back in the COVID-19 pandemic years—there are a whole host of legal consequences that could come from failure to follow state and local orders meant to keep the public as safe as possible during a declared emergency or health crisis.

While your chances of facing an injury lawsuit for contributing to the potential spread of a contagious disease are slim-to-none, it's a different story when it comes to violating laws meant to protect the public. If you fail to comply with a government-issued order or instruction related to a pandemic or other public health emergency, you could face any number of civil or criminal penalties.

Examples of State Laws Related to the Spread of Disease

New York City public health laws state that "No person shall intentionally or negligently cause or promote the spread of disease...by failure to observe, or by improper observance of, applicable requirements of isolation, quarantine, exclusion, treatment or other preventive measures." (New York City Health Code section 11.31.)

And an Illinois law gives the state fairly wide latitude to hand down criminal punishment to anyone whose conduct runs counter to or interferes with a health-related order: "Whoever violates or refuses to obey any rule or regulation of the Department of Public Health shall be deemed guilty of a Class A misdemeanor." (Illinois Revised Statutes section 2305/8.1.)

Should I Talk to a Lawyer About Suing Over Sickness?

No matter what kind of illness you're thinking of suing over, it's probably a good idea to at least run your situation past an experienced legal professional. Especially if you're still intent on suing over transmission of a cold or the flu, it can only help to get a lawyer's take on the wisdom of such a move. And if you've developed a serious illness or disease that can be linked to someone else's wrongdoing, a personal injury attorney can evaluate your situation and your options. Get tips on finding the right injury lawyer for you and your case