Walgreens
PORTLAND, Ore. – Oregon’s top court has held that medical providers can be held liable for the injuries of people who aren’t their patients, in a closely watched case involving a cyclist who was struck by a car and killed.
Among the groups urging the Oregon Supreme Court to take that position was the state’s plaintiffs lawyers association, which argued pharmacists who gave drugs to an addict should pay compensation to the estate of the cyclist killed by the patient.
The Thursday ruling is a blow to medical professionals in the state and their insurers. They had asked for an exception that would protect providers from harm to third parties.
“We decline to create such an exception,” Chief Justice Meagan Flynn wrote.
“Concern that it might be unfair to hold medical professionals liable for harm caused to nonpatients is addressed by the requirements that a medical professional’s liability for ordinary negligence is limited to physical harm resulting from conduct in treating a patient that in fact unreasonably creates a foreseeable risk of harm to nonpatients.”
St. Charles Family Care, High Desert Personal Medicine, Mosaic Medical and Walgreen Co. are defendants in a lawsuit brought by the Estate of Marika Jeanne Stone. They are alleged to have issued and filled prescriptions for Shante Lynn Witt, who was addicted to Clonazepam, Carisoprodol and Hydrocodone.
Stone, a dentist and mother of two, was 38 when Witt, who has changed her last name to Olsen, struck Stone’s bicycle in Bend on Dec. 30, 2017. Witt was found to have been under the influence of those prescription drugs and several others and was convicted of first-degree manslaughter.
Witt was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Stone’s family sued her and others in April 2018, seeking $34.5 million.
But Deschutes County judge Jack Landau threw the case out because it sought to hold medical professionals liable for harm done to nonpatients. The Court of Appeals last year reversed that ruling, and the Supreme Court followed suit, allowing the case to proceed.
Now, Stone’s estate can argue the providers prescribed addictive drugs in a manner that gave Witt more than she needed to treat her conditions. And the pharmacy had reason to believe Witt had a history of substance abuse and was seeking excessive amounts of drugs.
“The relationship between a professional service provider and a patient (or client) can affect the nature of the obligation owed to others,” Flynn wrote.
“But that relationship does not create a ‘protective bubble’ for the professional that precludes liability when the professional’s unreasonable conduct in treating a patient also creates a foreseeable risk of physical harm to people in the world generally.”
The American Medical Association and the National Association of Chain Drug Stores filed amicus briefs in support of the medical community. The NACDS said a decision like the one the Supreme Court reached will expose pharmacies to “indeterminate liability by countless unknown persons merely for accurately filling a prescription.”
