Man allegedly prescribed deadly double-dose of drugs

Amount of Settlement: $2.5 million

A 36-year-old father of three minor children had a medical history of Crohn’s disease, for which he received treatment. He had had virtually no contact with his children in recent years. On Feb. 2, 2006, he went to his treating hospital for post-operative complications -fecal matter leaking through a jejuna site – following recent hernia-repair surgery performed by the defendant surgeon the previous December. He was admitted for wound-care management for one week. The patient was primarily attended to by his surgeon and his surgical team, which included a first-year surgical intern. The plaintiff’s estate alleged that the surgeon and his surgical team, in consultation with a gastroenterologist, erroneously prescribed two powerful immunosuppressant drugs called Imuran and 6-MP, when the patient should have received only one of the drugs. The orders for Imuran and 6-MP were filled in the hospital pharmacy by two pharmacist defendants. On Feb. 9, the patient was discharged with written prescriptions for both Imuran and 6-MP in the same dosages that he had been taking in the hospital. By early March, he had become feverish and lethargic with no appetite, and his skin had grown pale. He was transported emergently via ambulance back to the hospital, where he remained until his death on March 27.