still entitled compensation. japan main article: contaminated blood scandal in japan in japan, the health ministry did not ban unheated products until december 1985, despite knowing that they were contaminated. as a result, over 1,400 japanese hemophiliacs were exposed to hiv, and more than 500 were believed to have died by 2001. in november 1995, a case involving japanese hemophiliacs settled, resulting in $420,000 for each victim, with $235,000 coming from industry and the rest from the japanese government. this was much higher than the results being discussed in the united states cases. in february 2000, three former drug company executives accused of selling blood products tainted with hiv were given prison terms. however, in march 2001, a tokyo court cleared the former top aids expert of professional negligence over the scandal. portugal in portugal, more than 100 portuguese hemophiliacs were infected with the aids virus after receiving transfusions of contaminated plasma that had been imported and distributed by the public health service. in 2001, a court indicted leonor beleza, a former health minister, for propagating a contagious disease during her time in office during the 1980s. united kingdom main article: contaminated blood scandal in the united kingdom united states in 1993, top executives of three companies (baxter international, rhône-poulenc and alpha therapeutic) met with leaders of the hemophilia community to outline the terms of a $125 million offer. rejecting the offer, david shrager, a plaintiffs' lawyer, filed a class action lawsuit with jonathan wadleigh as lead plaintiff on behalf of american hemophiliacs. shrager had previously negotiated a favourable settlement on behalf of canadian hemophiliacs and then established a panel of claimants, led by wadleigh, to advise him and other lawyers. in early 1995, the united states court of appeals for the seventh circuit in chicago decertified the lawsuit, saying it might bankrupt the industry. there became a split between wadleigh and corey dubin (another named plaintiff) who favoured appealing the seventh circuit decision to the supreme court of the united states, to protect the rights of all affected hemophiliacs, not just those who had already sued, while shrager wanted to shift gears and pursue the separate federal proceeding that had consolidated hundreds of individual lawsuits that had been filed against the producers. by june 1996, the differing groups reconciled, looking for industry settlement proposals. meanwhile, the clotting producers were quietly settling many claims. individual lawsuits continued to fail because most states had laws shielding blood products from traditional product liability claims. however, discovery was producing damaging documents contending that the companies had collected blood from high-risk donors like homosexuals and prisoners, intensifying informal settlement negotiations. james and matthews, using source plasma clinic address data, and a spatial/demographic model of illicit drug markets, reported data showing that during the period from 1980 to 1995, us source plasma clinics were over-represented in so-called "underclass" or extreme-poverty census tracts, and simultaneously demonstrate that link these same census tract types to active illicit drug markets. in 1997, bayer and the other three makers agreed to pay $660 million to settle cases on behalf of more than 6,000 hemophiliacs infected in united states in the early 1980s, paying an estimated $100,000 net to each infected hemophiliac. the settlement consent decree denied attorney contingent fees and provided a $40 million fund to pay attorneys as ordered by the court. soon after the settlement, because the new york state statute of limitations required people to file a lawsuit within three years of discovering an illness, new york governor george pataki signed a bill allowing people infected by blood products, or their survivors, two years to bring product liability suits against the manufacturers. while the settled class members are barred from filing suits against the companies, the bill allowed an estimated additional 75 eligible persons to file suits. the plaintiffs alleged that the companies manufactured and sold blood factor products as beneficial "medicines" that were, in fact, contaminated with hiv and/or hcv and resulted in the mass infection and/or deaths of thousands of hemophiliacs worldwide. the companies' failure to follow us federal law and conduct tests against viral hepatitis increased the risk of plasma containing hiv entering plasma pools.