Riddle v. State Bd. of Pharmacy

592 So. 2d 37, 1991 WL 261411
CourtMississippi Supreme Court
DecidedDecember 4, 1991
Docket90-CA-0164
StatusPublished
Cited by17 cases

This text of 592 So. 2d 37 (Riddle v. State Bd. of Pharmacy) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Mississippi Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Riddle v. State Bd. of Pharmacy, 592 So. 2d 37, 1991 WL 261411 (Mich. 1991).

Opinion

592 So.2d 37 (1991)

Stanley B. RIDDLE and the Medicine Shoppe
v.
MISSISSIPPI STATE BOARD OF PHARMACY.

No. 90-CA-0164.

Supreme Court of Mississippi.

December 4, 1991.
Rehearing Denied January 29, 1992.

*39 John P. Fox, Edward O. Powell, Houston, for appellants.

Mike C. Moore, Atty. Gen., Stephanie L. Ganucheau, Sp. Asst. Atty. Gen., Jackson, for appellee.

Before DAN M. LEE, P.J., and ROBERTSON and McRAE, JJ.

ROBERTSON, Justice, for the Court:

I.

This case lies along a lesser known front line of state control of powerful mood altering or addictive drugs. We are called to vindicate the licensing authority of the Mississippi State Board of Pharmacy (sometimes "MSBPh" or "the Board"), but we are called to do so consistent with the rights the individual pharmacist enjoys to fair treatment when he is called to account for regulatory violations. Also implicated is the efficacy of the phone-in prescription process.

MSBPh found the appellant pharmacist had committed several hundred prescription violations and revoked his license. On judicial review, the Chancery Court affirmed. We affirm as well.

II.

Stanley B. Riddle is an adult resident citizen of Lee County, Mississippi. He has for a number of years operated a retail pharmacy business in Tupelo, Mississippi, known as The Medicine Shoppe. Riddle has heretofore been a licensed registered pharmacist subject to the jurisdiction of the Mississippi State Board of Pharmacy, holding Certificate of Registration No. E-5923. See Miss. Code Ann. §§ 73-21-75, et seq. (1972 and Supp. 1991).

Riddle's place of business, The Medicine Shoppe, has heretofore held Pharmacy Permit No. 1818-PTT issued by MSBPh. On Riddle's application, MSBPh also issued Controlled Substance Registration No. CS-1818-PTT to The Medicine Shoppe, which, until these proceedings, had been authorized to dispense controlled substances by virtue of MSBPh Registration No. CS-E-5923.

Between June 7, 1988, and June 23, 1988, MSBPh agents investigated Riddle's drug dispensing activities through The Medicine Shoppe and found, within a seventeen-month period, beginning January 5, 1987, and extending through and including June 3, 1988:

(a) 192 occasions when Riddle dispensed a controlled substance without a valid prescription;
(b) 45 occasions when Riddle dispensed prescription drugs without a valid prescription;
(c) 107 instances when Riddle refilled a prescription at a greater frequency than that allowed by the dosage regimen prepared by the physician prescriber.

These findings were largely the result of the investigative efforts of Compliance Agent Wyatt Smith. Agent Smith visited The Medicine Shoppe, inspected its records, and made notes of patients who seemed to be receiving inordinate amounts of prescription drugs. He then examined the patient profiles for these patients and compared the medications dispensed with prescription documents. In doing this, Smith found that most of the prescriptions under scrutiny were "phone-in" prescriptions, *40 meaning that a physician had purportedly called The Medicine Shoppe and authorized the prescription rather than giving the patient a written prescription to take to the pharmacy. In the case of prescriptions that seemed suspicious, Agent Smith recorded in painstaking detail the physician's name, the patient's name, the type of drug, the date and quantity dispensed, and the like, and then personally called on the physicians whom Riddle's records reflected as authorizing the prescriptions. Through this process he identified and documented the 344 violations, summarized above. One verification exception arose in the case of prescriptions purportedly authorized by Dr. P.L. Thomas, Jr., who had retired in January of 1987, and had not retained his records.

On July 14, 1988, the Executive Director of the Mississippi State Board of Pharmacy issued a thirty-one page formal complaint charging Riddle in the premises, setting forth each of the occasions when it appeared Riddle had dispensed a drug or controlled substance without proper authority. The complaint was served upon Riddle and advised him to appear before the Board for an administrative hearing. The complaint told Riddle the charges "if proven ... could result in the suspension or revocation or restriction of your license to practice pharmacy."[1]

In due course, the Board convened and on September 8, 1988, found that the evidence sustained the charges:

... that Stanley B. Riddle dispensed controlled substances without valid prescriptions[[2]] and refilled controlled substance prescriptions with greater frequency than indicated by the dosage regimen on the prescription document.[3]

The Board then revoked Riddle's pharmacy license and registration to dispense controlled substances, and, as well, The Medicine Shoppe's controlled substance registration.

Riddle appealed to the Chancery Court of Lee County, Mississippi. Miss. Code Ann. § 73-21-101(1) (1972). On January 16, 1990, that Court entered its order affirming *41 the MSBPh order. Riddle now appeals to this Court.

III.

Riddle argues alternatively that MSBPh's findings are not supported by substantial evidence and the Board's actions in his case were arbitrary and capricious. Miss. Code Ann. § 73-21-101(2)(a) and (b) (1972). These familiar standards, though not synonymous, overlap sufficiently that we often consider them simultaneously. See, e.g., Mississippi Real Estate Commission v. White, 586 So.2d 805, 808 (Miss. 1991). Riddle's argument, if we understand it, is that the "prescriptions" at issue were all phone-in prescriptions, that his records support his authority to dispense the drugs in issue, and that it is not his fault that the physicians kept sloppy or inadequate records. He discusses, as well, procedural deficiencies said to have been present in MSBPh's process, points more appropriately considered under Section IV below.

We have held in cases too numerous to mention that, in administrative proceedings against professionals licensed by the state, the disciplinary board or agency is charged to demand clear and convincing evidence of the offense. Mississippi Real Estate Commission v. White, 586 So.2d at 808; State Board of Psychological Examiners v. Hosford, 508 So.2d 1049, 1054 (Miss. 1987); Hogan v. Mississippi Board of Nursing, 457 So.2d 931, 934 (Miss. 1985); cf. Levi v. Mississippi State Bar, 436 So.2d 781, 783 (Miss. 1983). On judicial review, the Chancery Court does not proceed de novo, nor does this Court. Rather, the disciplinary agency's decision is insulated from judicial disturbance where it is supported by substantial evidence and is neither arbitrary nor capricious. Miss. Code Ann. § 73-21-101(2)(a) and (b) (1972); Duckworth v. Mississippi State Board of Pharmacy, 583 So.2d 200, 202 (Miss. 1991); State Board of Psychological Examiners v. Hosford, 508 So.2d at 1054.

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Bluebook (online)
592 So. 2d 37, 1991 WL 261411, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/riddle-v-state-bd-of-pharmacy-miss-1991.