COLUMBUS — The parents of a two-time all-Ohio high school football player that died from a drug overdose was allowed to sue Walgreens for supplying him with 260 doses of opioid painkillers in less than two months.
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In October 2009, Stephen Mehrer tore a rotator cuff while playing football for Dublin Jerome High School. His doctor prescribed 50 pills of hydrocodone to help with the pain. Hydrocodone was a Schedule III substance, which was considered by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to be addictive, but less likely to be abused than a more powerful Schedule II painkiller.
Mehrer underwent surgery on the shoulder in November 2009. On the day of surgery, Walgreens dispensed 60 hydrocodone pills.
The next day, Walgreens filled a prescription to Mehrer for 50 oxycodone pills prescribed by a second doctor. Oxycodone was a Schedule II substance and considered by the DEA to be highly addictive.
Five days after giving Mehrer the 50 oxycodone pills, Walgreens gave Mehrer 50 more oxycodone pills prescribed by the first doctor.
Another five days later, Walgreens dispensed 50 more hydrocodone pills to Mehrer.
Mehrer received a scholarship to join the Kent State University football team as a college freshman, but his parents claimed he immediately became addicted to the prescription painkillers based on the initial pills dispensed by Walgreens.
He entered drug rehabilitation five times to treat his addiction. Despite a period of sobriety, he died in October 2017 by overdosing on a combination of oxycodone, fentanyl, and acetyl—all opioid painkillers.
Mehrer’s parents initially sued Walgreens in 2019 and revised the lawsuit in 2020, claiming the company’s action led to the wrongful death of their son.
A Walgreens representative explained the company’s computer system has “safety blocks” that allowed pharmacists to determine if a patient had multiple prescriptions to the same drug and how early a patient was refilling a prescription. If a patient tried to fill a prescription too soon, the computer system would alert the pharmacist to consult with the patient, caregiver, and prescriber.
The two physicians, who were never disciplined for overprescribing the medication, testified that their prescriptions were reasonable and appropriate for treating Mehrer’s pain following surgery.
In February 2021, Walgreens asked the trial court for summary judgment. The company argued its pharmacists filling the prescriptions wasn’t the cause of the ultimate injury that led to Mehrer’s death. The company also argued that under the “learned intermediary doctrine,” pharmacists in Ohio generally don’t have a legal obligation to warn patients of the adverse reactions, side effects, or dangers of prescriptions drugs for every prescription they fill.
In April 2022, the trial court granted summary judgement to Walgreens, focusing only on the argument that Walgreens’ actions weren’t the cause of Mehrer’s death.
The family appealed, which was later approved because the danger of addiction from such a dosage was “identifiable and knowable” by the pharmacy and that the time between the addiction and the ultimate death did not negate Walgreens’ responsibility.
“If a surgeon left scissors in the belly of a patient undergoing surgery, and the scissors punctured the patient eight years later and caused the patient to die, the surgeon would be liable for the death,” Dr. Corey Waller, who serves in various capacities with the American Society of Addiction Medicine, stated in his testimony during the original trial.
As a result of this concern, among others, the case was to be returned to trial court for further review, the Tenth District ruled.
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