Access To Justice

Patricia Copening careened down US 95 in Nevada and struck two men attempting to change a flat tire, killing one and causing severe injuries to the other. She wasn’t coming from a keg party or neighborhood bar; no bartender helped her get to this point. Rather, she was coming from a local pharmacy at the nearby Wal-Mart, where she’d just seen the pharmacist.

Her victims and their families are now raising questions and tracing accountability back to the pharmacy. Copening was considered a potential prescription drug abuser, which state officials had documented and reported to 14 pharmacies in the Las Vegas area after she purchased nearly 4,500 doses of prescription pain killers in one year. Nevada pharmacies have been reporting prescription drug use to the state and receiving advisories about potential drug abuse since 1997.

Mandated monitoring in more than 30 states comes in response to the sharp rise in prescription drug use—and abuse—over the past 20 years. At the same time, electronic health records, networked pharmacy computer systems, and state prescription-tracking databases have become more efficient and ubiquitous, combining to allow medical professionals insight to potentially alarming data.

So what was the responsibility of the pharmacy to act on this information? A trial judge dismissed the case, stating that Wal-Mart wasn’t responsible because while the state reported information, they never told pharmacies what they should do with the information they received.  The Nevada Supreme Court is considering the case now.  In 1994, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled that a pharmacy has a duty to stop dispensing painkillers to a patient refilling the prescription more frequently than “would be appropriate.” Pharmacy chains party to the case, including Wal-Mart, CVS Caremark, and Walgreen, are watching it closely.  Though they’ve long faced liability for actions such as incorrectly filling a prescription, this decision could open them up to broader and more far-reaching responsibility with what happens after their prescriptions leave the store.