Baby’s Brain Injury Blamed on Botched Scrip

FLINT, Mich. (CN) - Rite Aid faces a lawsuit over an infant's traumatic brain injury based on an allegedly botched prescription of sleeping pills for the baby's mother.

Kraig Sippell filed the complaint on May 1 in Genesee County Circuit Court as conservator for the estate of the infant Jacobi Smith.

Smith was just a few weeks old in October 2008 when his mother, Jamie Shaffer, received a prescription for the sleep aid Resterol (temazepam), according to the complaint.

Though the prescription directed Shaffer to take one 15 mg pill every eight hours at 8 p.m., a Rite Aid pharmacy in Flint filled the prescription incorrectly on Oct. 9, Sippil claims.

"When the defendants filled the subject prescription, they mistakenly placed on the prescription bottle the directions to take a pill 'every eight hours' rather than one each day at 8:00 p.m.," the complaint states.

Sippil says Shaffer followed those directions and was overmedicated on Oct. 15 when she passed out while holding her infant son.

"As a result of being dropped from his mother's arms, Jacobi Smith suffered a traumatic brain injury," the complaint states.

Smith suffered "bilateral frontal lobe contusions, which has resulted in significant permanent damages and deficits," Sippell claims.

Alleging negligence, Sippil seeks damages from Apex Drug Stores Inc. dba Rite Aid of Michigan Inc., and pharmacist Art Milliman.

He is represented by Thomas Waun with Waun & Parillo of Grand Blanc, Mich.

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