Pubdate: Wed, 27 Mar 2002
Source: Appalachian News-Express (KY)
Copyright: 2002 Appalachian News-Express
Contact:  http://www.news-expressky.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1450

SILLY SUIT OXY LITIGATION COULD SET A DANGEROUS PRECEDENT

Ponder this scenario.

An employee of a liquor store, as time goes on, develops a dependency on 
alcohol.

To feed that habit, that employee soon begins stealing alcohol from the 
business and taking it home largely for his own use. At some point, the 
employee - most likely under the influence of alcohol - is driving a friend 
around when he crashes his car, injuring the passenger and getting himself 
charged in connection with the accident after police find alcohol in the 
vehicle. About a year later, the passenger files suit not only against the 
driver of the vehicle for damages in return for his injuries, but also the 
owners of the liquor store the man worked at, alleging their failure to 
keep track of the missing inventory led to the employee's addiction and the 
accident. Sounds kind of illogical, right?

Or in the least, a pretty good stretch. But that's exactly what happened 
less than two weeks ago in Pike Circuit Court when Joshua Justice filed 
suit against Scott R. Justice, a Pikeville man who was sentenced last year 
to five years in prison for trafficking some portion of the thousands of 
OxyContin pills he took from Total Pharmacy Care of Pikeville and Phelps 
while working at the stores.

Joshua Justice claims being under the influence of those drugs caused Scott 
Justice to crash his vehicle last March. Joshua Justice was injured, while 
Scott Justice - the driver - was charged for possessing controlled 
substances OxyContin and Alprazolam.

While Joshua Justice appears in a position to receive damages in connection 
with his injuries and that allegation, our problem with the case starts 
when he claims the pharmacy's co-owners and pharmacists are just as liable 
as Scott Justice in causing the wreck. The suit claims that's because they 
should have known the pills Scott Justice took were unaccounted for, and 
that they failed to provide adequate security for their controlled 
substances. Such negligence, the action further claims, directly led to 
Scott Justice's drug addiction and the crash itself.

But what Joshua Justice likely sees as an opportunity to collect 
undetermined sums from an obviously profitable pharmacy, we see as flawed 
logic that seeks to take advantage of an already bad situation surrounding 
America's most maligned prescription drug.

The pharmacy's owners and pharmacists indeed might not have undertaken 
stringent security and accountability measures the dispensing of OxyContin 
now warrants. Had they done so, it might not have taken a drug-related car 
crash to set off a police investigation into Scott Justice being linked to 
roughly 5,000 missing narcotic pills.

Still, stretching that possibility into those persons being the direct 
cause of the accident that injured Joshua Justice is a jump we're not 
willing to make. And neither should the local court system.

The judiciary should take a hard look at this case and opt to throw out the 
pharmacy's owners and pharmacists as defendants. If it doesn't, it could be 
creating a dangerous precedent that could set the state up for a logjam of 
litigation. And that litigation could financially slam dunk pharmacies 
everywhere over similar situations involving not only OxyContin, but 
literally hundreds of other prescription drugs used and abused for years.

As a newspaper that has chronicled OxyContin's deadly explosion since well 
before the national media even knew what it was, we're never hesitant to 
criticize the drug over the snobbery of its manufacturer or the doctors who 
overprescribe or misprescribe it because of the money it generates.

But not this time.
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MAP posted-by: Beth