New Jersey's Prescription Drug Monitoring Program

A recent Nevada Supreme Court decision, Sanchez v. Wal-Stores, Inc. , 221 P.3d 1276 (Nev. 2009), may forecast how New Jersey courts will define drug dispensers’ duty of care to protect unidentified third parties from pharmacy customers whose potential prescription drug abuse is known (or should be known) from reports available through state-run Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (“PDMP”). At present, 34 states have operational PDMPs and seven other states, including New Jersey, have enacted legislation to establish PDMPs. Like most states, New Jersey’s PMDP statute, N.J.S.A. Sections 45:1-44 to 1-50, establishes a statewide electronic database designed to collect designated data on controlled substances dispensed in the state and to distribute the information to authorized users. Pursuant to these PDMPs, several states have taken the initiative to alert pharmacies, doctors, and wholesale drug distributors about customers and patients who are potentially abusing prescription drugs, both as a matter of public safety and in an effort to rein in health care spending.

The central question in Sanchez was whether eight pharmacy defendants owed a duty of care to two automobile accident victims injured in June of 2004 by a pharmacy customer, Ms. Copening, who was driving under the influence of controlled prescription drugs. According to the complaint, the defendant pharmacies had received a warning from the Nevada Prescription Controlled Substance Abuse Prevention Task Force, informing them that Ms. Copening had obtained approximately 4,500 doses of prescription painkillers at 13 different pharmacies between May 2002 and May 2003. Based on this notification, plaintiffs alleged that the pharmacies were negligent in continuing to fill Ms. Copening’s prescriptions. Notably, the complaint did not allege any irregularities on the face of the prescriptions or that drugs were dispensed contrary to a doctor’s order. Nevertheless, the plaintiffs asserted that Nevada’s PDMP statute created a duty of care for pharmacies to protect the general public from harm caused by a known potential drug abuser.