Are you kidding me? The lawyers are going to sue whom?

[Scuba]

Last edited Thu Apr 26, 2012, 06:10 PM - Edit history (1)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/industries/container-ship-owner-sues-pharmacists-says-meds-led-pilot-to-crash-in-san-francisco-bay/2012/04/25/gIQAIwovgT_story.html

AN FRANCISCO — The owners and operators of a container ship that slammed into the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge in 2007 and spilled thousands of gallons of oil into San Francisco Bay have sued the Northern California pharmacists they claim negligently dispensed prescription drugs to the pilot of the Cosco Busan.

...

In their lawsuit, they maintain the pharmacy that furnished Cota with medication should foot some of the bill because pharmacists allegedly did not warn Cota about combining drugs, consulted his doctors or contacted pilot licensing authorities, the newspaper said.

The lawsuit does not list the drugs Cota took or say why he was prescribed them, but cites an e-mail an unidentified pharmacy worker allegedly sent the Coast Guard after the November 2007 accident, advising investigators to “Check John Cota for prescription drugs.”

After investigating the accident, the National Transportation Safety Board concluded that Cota’s cognitive abilities had been degraded by prescription drug use. The board also faulted Cota, who had been a licensed pilot for 27 years, for choosing to sail in heavy fog, misreading the ship’s radar and navigation charts and failing to share his navigation plan’s with the captain.

Putting aside the horribly written second excerpted paragraph, does anybody really think the pharmacists who filled his prescriptions have liability here?

[trumad]

1. In other news...

The Washington Post is suing the pharmacists who dispensed prescription drugs to their writer who wrote the second paragraph of this story.

[Blue_Tires]

3. I always have a little chuckle to myself when I see the downward spiral of editing standards

and remember every time the WaPo (and several other papers) rejected my job application...

[JI7]

2. they think the pharmacy should have contacted pilot licensing authorities ?

[notadmblnd]

4. Not if he gave out the phamplet that comes with every prescription.

[Snake Alchemist]

5. And people wonder why you can't play dodgeball at school anymore. nt

[jberryhill]

6. Whenever you see a story about a lawsuit like this...

There is a background context which is not reported, and is actually the real story.

What you are seeing is not a shipping line suing pharmacists. That's only the form it takes.

But what's really going on is a game of "who's picking up the tab" between and among insurance companies.

Here's how it works.

Something awful happens, which is pretty much the fault of company A. Company A goes to its insurer to pay claims. A's insurer conditions its obligation to pay claims on an exclusion of liability of anyone else. For example, A's insurer might withhold or not pay claims on the grounds that someone else is at least partially liable. In order to get the claims fully paid and settled, A's insurer basically puts company A in the position of having to litigate against any other party who might remotely have some kind of liability, and the outcome of that action determines whether A's insurer is going to fully pay the claims, or whether someone else's insurer is going to have to chip in.

If you look at it as a morality tale in which you are asked to figure out who is responsible for what, from some moral perspective, then yes, these kinds of things will drive you batty. However, the other way of looking at is is simply as a system for distributing risk and the cost of risk.

A prime example of that sort of thing was an "OMG that's awful" lawsuit on DU a while back where some injured person was suing the parents of a kid who left a toy on a sidewalk outside their home on which the person tripped and suffered some spectacularly disproportionate injury. The suit alleged negligent supervision or something, but it wasn't really about the parents, the kid or the toy. It was really between the victim's medical insurer and the parents' homeowner's insurer.

The parties to a whole raft of lawsuits are merely bit players in a larger question of whose insurance company is going to have to pay for what.

[marybourg]

7. Whom.

And it's always open to anyone to "sue". Then a judge decides whether there's a case to be made. Then a judge or jury decides whether it WAS made.

[Scuba]

8. OMG, thank you. If my grandmother had seen it I'd have been in trouble!

Seriously, thank you. I should know better.