The District of Columbia Court of Appeals has ruled that a man who spent five years thinking he was HIV positive can sue the DC clinic that allegedly gave him the misdiagnosis, the Washington City Paper reports. Terry Hedgepeth claims to have been given a false positive in 2000 when he was tested for HIV at the Whitman-Walker Clinic (now known as Whitman-Walker Health). His first $20 million lawsuit was thrown out because the judge based his ruling on a law that linked the ability to sue to physical injury—the judge said that no physical injury came to Hedgepeth. The DC Court of Appeals decision overturned the previous ruling. It ruled that care of the body and emotions are interlinked and that patients are susceptible to suffer emotionally as well as physically as the result of a doctor’s negligence.

To read the Washington City Paper article, click here.