$1,800,000 For Death Due To Overprescription of Opioids
William O. Crutchlow of Eichen Crutchlow Zaslow, LLP with offices in Edison, New Jersey and Toms River, New Jersey recently resolved a case on behalf of the family of a man who died by suicide following a long period of overprescription of opioid pain medications. Our client’s husband was a man in his forties who had been treating with the defendant clinicians for several years as a pain management patient due to back pain. We clearly established a pattern of recurring high dose opioid prescriptions issued at brief office visits without any effort to determine the cause of the pain, to order objective testing, to seek consultation with other medical specialties, to try other treatment modalities, to reduce the opioid prescription or to manage the severe addiction that the clinicians had created through their neglect. We worked closely with experts in pain management, addiction medicine, psychiatry and forensic economics to establish that the medical malpractice of the defendants led to a crippling addiction to opioids which in turn led to the suicide of their patient. This case was settled on behalf of two attending physicians and a nurse practitioner.