The duty to counsel: reviewing a decade of litigation

Twenty-three legal cases from the 1980s were studied. The allegation in each of these cases was that the defendant pharmacist should have done something more than correctly process a prescription to prevent harm to the patient from drug use. Four theoretical models of pharmacist legal responsibility are considered: (1) the policy-analysis model, (2) the professional-standards model, (3) the consumer-expectation model, and (4) the power model. It is concluded that the power model, based on superior knowledge and reasonable foreseeability of harm, best defines the pharmacist's legal responsibility, consistent with established legal precedents.