£4500 recovered for client who was dispensed an incomplete prescription by his pharmacist

02 September 2022

Kate Rushton, Solicitor in our Clinical Negligence Department, has recently settled a case for a client who attended his regular pharmacist to collect his weekly prescription but was only provided with one out of three essential medicines. 

Our client only noticed the error, in that Diazepam and Nitrazepam were missing from his medications, when he got home later that day and by that time the pharmacy had closed. 

Unfortunately, the incident occurred on New Year’s Eve and consequently the pharmacy was closed for the next 3 days.  As such our client was unable to contact the pharmacy and request his missing medication until after the holiday.

Due to our client’s longstanding prescription he suffered withdrawal symptoms over this period including episodes of drowsiness and confusion. It was during one of these episodes that he fell and sustained a significant bang to his head, causing him to lose consciousness.  He attended Accident and Emergency the same day and underwent a CT Head scan which confirmed a post traumatic hemorrhage.

Our client was referred for further investigations but fortunately made a good recovery within a few weeks.

We were able to achieve a speedy result for our client in this instance.  We secured an early admission of liability and an offer of settlement shortly after requesting and reviewing his medical records and notifying the Defendant of the claim.

If you wish to discuss a potential clinical negligence claim with our specialist solicitors you can email us, use our online enquiry form, call us for free on 0800 008 7450, call us on our mobile friendly number on 0333 2400340 or text "CURTIS" to 82727.