Court Opinion

ID: 9613063
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 04:13:52.230767+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:03:26.892034
License: Public Domain

Pope, Chief Judge,
concurring specially.
I concur with the judgment of the majority; however, I disagree with the holding in Walker v. Jack Eckerd Corp., 209 Ga. App. 517 (434 SE2d 63) (1993), and believe the majority’s reliance on the case is misplaced.
In Eckerd, a majority of this court held that pharmacists have no common-law duty to warn patients of possible error. In my dissent, I agreed with the Washington Supreme Court which attributed to a pharmacist the limited duty “to accurately fill a prescription and to be alert for clear errors or mistakes. . . .” (Citations and punctuation omitted.) Id. at 525 (Pope, C. J., dissenting). In my view, a pharmacist should be required to question a prescription which is erroneous or irregular in order to protect the patient and the physician from errors which could not be detected by the patient which are apparent to a properly trained pharmacist. Id. at 526.
The relationship between pharmacist and patient is not analogous to that between the manufacturer of a medical device and patient. The limited duty which I attribute to the pharmacist arises by virtue of his intermediary role between the physician and the patient. The pharmacist exerts some control over dispensing prescription medications. He is aware of potentially hazardous side effects and is in a position to discuss with the physician or the patient any “obvious inadequacies appearing on the face of the prescription which create a substantial risk of serious harm to the plaintiff.” Id. No such intermediary position exists for the manufacturer of a medical device which must be prescribed, purchased, surgically implanted and supervised by a physician. At all times the device and its application are under the control of the prescribing physician. The conditions do not exist and the manufacturer has no practical means to supply a patient with notice of any risks or side effects associated with the use of its product. Therefore, I concur in the majority opinion that defendant had no common-law duty to warn Ms. Lance of the risks associated with the use of the gastric bubble and would affirm the trial court’s grant of summary judgment to the defendant.