Court Opinion

ID: 9535315
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:47:55.519632+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:33:13.131740
License: Public Domain

MR. JUSTICE JOHN C. HARRISON
(dissenting):
I dissent.
The majority chose to limit this case to a “haec verba” interpretation of the statutes giving little consideration to the discretionary powers of the administrative pharmacy board. If this board is without discretionary powers, but is one of rubber stamp abilities, then why were professional men put on the board by the legislature? It is my view that the legislature realizing it could not anticipate all the problems of a profession put men on the board whose education and business experience gave them knowledge that would provide administristrative standards and guide lines which would serve the public interest.
In this case a full and complete hearing was held by the board giving the appellant-clinic ample opportunity to present its case. The board ruling was appealed to the district court and the Hon. E. Gardner Brownlee, judge of the fourth judicial district, held a hearing, reviewed the transcript of the board’s hearing and sustained the decision of the board in denying the license.
The board through evidence presented and its own know*111ledge knew that the Montana Medical Association, by resolution, does “condemn physician owned clinic pharmacies as unethical, unwarranted and detrimental to good medicine and pharmaceutical service.” Ethics, being that branch of moral science which treats of duties which a member of a profession owes the public, should, I believe, be a controlling factor, as it was, in the board’s decision. Not to recognize their discretionary power to do so is in my opinion error.
In addition to its discretionary powers, the board most certainly operating within its administrative powers can protect the public health of the citizens of this state. As both citizens and professional men they could not but be aware of the ugly charges revealed during recent Senate hearings to the effect that some physicians engaged in nefarious practices— prescribing unsuitably, overprescribing, overcharging and foreclosing the patient’s freedom of choice when the physician owns the pharmacy. In such cases the patient is a captured customer.
By the adoption of ethical standards prohibiting this condition both the American Medical Association and the Montana Medical Association have attempted to police their members.
The pharmacy board action in recognizing these ethical standards as a guide in Montana was neither arbitrary nor capricious and in my opinion we should have recognized it as a controlling factor as it relates to the administration of a police regulation and as necessary to protect the general welfare and safety of the public. This Court in State ex rel. Altop v. City of Billings, 79 Mont. 25, 255 P. 11, 54 A.L.A.1091, set forth certain exceptions to the general rule on the exercise of the police- powers by a city commission that are in my opinion applicable and controlling here and as the board set forth in its brief “It would be a strange rule of law indeed that in the case of rooming houses there could be unlimited discretion where as in the- case of pharmacies which are handling danger*112ous drugs and must have certain qualifications that this power does not exist insofar as the State Board of Pharmacy is concerned.”