The family of a Troy MI man has sued Rite Aid, alleging an error at a Troy pharmacy led to his premature and wrongful death, according to their attorney.
The suit, filed in Wayne County Circuit Court, alleges that Rite Aid pharmacists were negligent when they issued a lethal dose of a chemotherapy drug to John Sheridan, who developed malignant melanoma that had spread to his brain in 2007.
The prescription, issued in September, instructed Sheridan to take 14 capsules by mouth daily of Temodar — which was approximately ten times the usual dose of the drug and almost double of what is known to be fatal, according to Brian McKeen, of McKeen & Associates in Detroit. Sheridan took the excessively high dose, which allowed his cancer to rapidly grow and led to his October 2007 death at the age of 52, the attorney said.
“There is no question that the filling of this prescription was grossly negligent,” McKeen said. “It was in violation of every standard of the practice of pharmacy. Red flags should have been raised by this prescription.”
The doctor who issued the prescription admitted his error and settled with the family out of court.
Sheridan, developed melanoma on his back two years ago, said his wife of 28 years, Katherine Sheridan. Though he had it removed, it spread to his brain, she said. She didn’t expect him to survive the cancer after it spread. But she didn’t expect him to die so soon.
She hopes that there is some sort of policy change that would prevent something like this from happening at another pharmacy.
“You just want to put faith in your doctors and pharmacists to do right,” Sheridan said. “But that didn’t happen for us.”
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