Woman Spends Night In Jail For Picking Up Prescription Refill

Police in Dallas added insult to injury when they arrested a woman in a leg brace for a shattered knee on charges of forging her painkiller prescription, even though her doctor says no one ever checked with him to see if the ‘scrip was legitimate.

The woman tells CBS Dallas Fort Worth that she’d called her local CVS to order a refill on her prescription for Norco. When it was ready, the pharmacist called her to ask when exactly she’d be coming by to pick up her meds.

The pills were not waiting for her at the counter, but a police officer was.

“He was like ‘we need to go outside,'” she tells CBS. “I was on crutches and I had a permanent IV line in my arm. I had a big leg brace… He said, ‘Well we believe that you have forged your pain pill prescription and we are calling your doctor now. But I’ve worked with this pharmacist a number of times and he’s never made a mistake.”

And yet, the issue was not resolved quickly, as she remained in jail overnight until finally being released on bond, but only after being charged with obtaining a controlled substance by fraud.

She also was not allowed to return to work until she was able to show her employer that the arrest was made in error.

The police eventually dropped the charges but that’s not stopping the woman for suing CVS for False Imprisonment and Defamation.

“Every doctor that prescribes a narcotic had a DEA number that’s unique to them and if that is cross referenced and the correct doctor is contacted then I don’t imagine that this type of thing would happen,” her lawyer explains. “We suspect the wrong doctor was contacted because they didn’t cross reference the DEA number.”

The doctor confirms that he wrote the prescription but also says CVS never contacted him about it before his patient’s arrest.

A CVS rep tells a CBS reporter, “We are investigating how this unfortunate incident occurred and we are working to resolve the matter.”

Woman Jailed For Trying To Fill A Prescription [CBS DFW]

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