A customer who sought $1.75 million from a Portland nail salon — alleging that it spread the genital herpes virus during a manicure — has reached a confidential settlement with the business.
The case was supposed to go to trial this month in Multnomah County Circuit Court, but instead a judge dismissed it after lawyers announced they’d come to an agreement. Lawyers representing both the then-23-year-old plaintiff and the salon, PDX Nails, said they were prohibited from publicly disclosing the terms.
The unusual allegation — that the woman acquired the herpes simplex virus type 2, also known as the genital herpes virus — made national and international headlines after The Oregonian/OregonLive first reported on the lawsuit when it was filed in March 2024.
The woman received permission from a judge to be identified only by the letters S.R., out of fear of public humiliation and alienation.
The woman claimed in the lawsuit that she went to PDX Nails’ location near Northeast 120th Avenue and Glisan Street to get an acrylic nails manicure in June 2023 and that the nail technician didn’t wear gloves and stored drill bits used as part of the manicure in an Altoids tin.
After the manicure, the woman said she noticed some inflammation and swelling around two of her fingers and began to feel ill. Four days later, painful blisters had formed around one of her fingers and she sought help at a Kaiser Permanente urgent care clinic, where medical staff swabbed the blisters. According to the lawsuit, the results came back positive for an infection – herpetic whitlow – which is caused by the genital herpes virus.
The suit states that the woman didn’t have herpes before her manicure. Since her first infection, the virus flared up multiple times, was painful and led her to repeatedly bandage her fingers to prevent the virus from spreading to others while she was out in public, according to the suit.
Documented instances of herpes transferred through manicures are rare. But in 2002, a jury awarded a Colorado woman $3.1 million after finding she contracted herpes from a manicure using non-sterile instruments.
Lawsuits faulting others for spreading herpes through sexual intercourse also have prevailed. In 2012, a Multnomah County jury awarded a Portland woman $900,000 after she contracted herpes from her date, who had sex with her without informing her of his status.
Both PDX Nails’ attorney, Megan Ferris, and the woman’s attorney, Amity Girt, declined comment to The Oregonian/OregonLive.
— Reporter Aimee Green can be reached at 503-294-5119, agreen@oregonian.comor on Bluesky.
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