New Jersey Accident and Injury Law Blog : New Jersey Injury Lawyer & Attorney : The Grossman Law Firm : Serving Monmouth County, Bergen County

The family of a man has filed a lawsuit against a Rite Aid store in Michigan alleging that a medication error that occurred at a local pharmacy, contributed to his death.

The victim John Sheridan, an attorney, developed melanoma on his back in 2007. The cancer quickly spread to his brain.  In September that year, Rite Aid issued a dose of a chemotherapy drug Temodar, which was much higher than his recommended dosage. According to the prescription, Sheridan was to take 14 capsules daily of Temodar.  That was roughly 10 times the normal dosage and almost double a fatal dosage. Rite Aid failed to spot the error, and filled out the prescription. Sheridan unwittingly took the high dose, which contributed to his cancer developing rapidly. Within the next month , Sheridan was dead.

The doctor who issued the prescription has since settled with the family out of court. Sheridan’s family has filed a lawsuit against Rite Aid for issuing the lethal dose of Temodar. The family insists that the Rite Aid pharmacist should have noted the prescription error, and should have contacted Sheridan’s oncologist to inform him of the error. They failed to do so, contributing to the rapid deterioration of Sheridan’s health, and finally resulting in his death just a month later.

When you undergo treatment for an illness, you expect that doctors, nurses and pharmacists in charge of your health are completely accurate in their diagnosis and treatment.  You depend on their sense of responsibility because as an ill person, or the loved one of a patient, you really don’t have a choice but to place your trust and faith in the hands of the doctor or pharmacists. The Rite Aid pharmacy here had a golden opportunity to correct a serious medication error

If you have had any experience with pharmacy errors in New Jersey, l want to speak with you in connection with a special TV report on pharmacy errors. Please contact a pharmacy error lawyer at my office.

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USA Today has an interesting report on how pharmacy boards across many states have a majority of their board members made up of employees of major chain pharmacies, ensuring that any oversight of pharmacies or reduction of filling errors is limited at best.

The concept of having pharmacy chain employees on state pharmacy boards supposedly ensures that these boards have the expertise of seasoned professionals to draw from. While that may be true, it also ensures that the boards are staffed with a number of members who act to protect the interests of the pharmacies they work for. It reduces the concept of an "independent" state board regulating and overseeing the functioning of thousands of pharmacies in a state, to a farce.

For instance, in Illinois, the chairman of the Pharmacy Board has a day job as the national director of pharmacy affairs at Walgreen. Similarly, Pennsylvania's Board is chaired by the vice president of pharmacy services at Rite Aid. There are more such examples at Arkansas, Massachusetts and Minnesota where pharmacy chain employees occupy important positions on the board.

Nobody should be too surprised when these board members who have vested interests proceed to veto decisions that are detrimental to the interests of the chain they work for. A perfect example to illustrate the conflict of interest here is the case of Tonya Pearson, a pharmacist at a Jacksonville Walgreen outlet, whose failure to catch a prescription error led to the death of Terry Paul Smith, a construction worker. When the employee came up for disciplinary hearings, a board member who was also a pharmacist at Walgreen, vetoed a fine of $10,000 on the erring Pearson. She got away with a $1,000 fine, and an "education program" to help catch errors – something Walgreen should have put her through before it allowed her to fill prescriptions at their outlet.

Such conflict of interest has riled advocates of better separation between the regulator and the regulated. But, the status quo continues merrily, and the only sufferers are victims of prescription errors like Terry Paul Smith. It's injustices like these that inspire pharmacy misfill lawyers who often turn out to be the only line of defense against well connected, big name chain pharmacies and their widespread sphere of influence. 

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You have read on this blog my ongoing reporting and analysis of the epidemic of pharmacy errors and the threat to the public that it poses. Well here is a variation on the theme.  Today it was announced on NJ.com, that retail pharmacy chain Rite Aid settled a lawsuit with New Jersey for $475,000 for selling expired over-the-counter medications along with expired infant formulas and baby food. According to the article, 42 Rite Aid stores were found selling expired items throughout New Jersey. If the chain, which also includes Eckerd stores, fails to comply with the terms of the settlement over the next year, it faces an additional $175,000 in penalties.

 Once again, I implore the public to be extra vigilant when shopping at these pharmacies. It is bad enough that we are forced to defend ourselves against prescription errors at the hands of pharmacists and their technicians; now simply going to the shelves for Tylenol or a can of Similac has become a potential health threat to us as well.

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