How have courts dealt with an error in filling a prescription with a different type of medicine?

In Fagan v. McRae, supra, the druggist filled the plaintiff's prescription with an opaque white liquid instead of the clear brown one prescribed. There was evidence that during the two days the plaintiff ingested the erroneous prescription before the mistake was discovered, her condition became worse. In reversing the judgment in favor of the plaintiff, the court said that since the physician who testified about the decline in the plaintiff's condition was not acquainted with the ingredients of the medicine erroneously furnished, there was insufficient evidence of proximate cause.

In Scherer v. Schlaberg, supra, a threemonth-old infant suffering from uremic poisoning was given several doses of an erroneously filled prescription and died. In affirming the judgment in favor of the druggist on the basis of the contributory negligence of the child's father, the court pointed out that the expert testimony unanimously established that the child died of uremic poisoning. There was no expert testimony[235 Cal.App.2d 787] that the child's death was caused by the morphine in the erroneously filled prescription.