$30 MILLION AWARDED FOR DRUG ERROR

Thrifty Payless admits dispensing an overdose of phenobarbital. Girl, 10,
suffered brain damage.

SANTA ANA--Thrifty Payless Inc. was ordered Wednesday to pay $30.6 million
for the care of a 10-year-old Costa Mesa girl who was left with brain
damage after being given a medication nearly seven times more powerful than
prescribed.

The drugstore chain admitted during the trial in Orange County Superior
Court that it had erroneously filled Bryn Cabanillas' prescription for
anti-seizure medication by giving her the improper dosage. The jury awarded
$5.3 million for past damages and $25.3 million to cover the child's
medical costs, estimated at about $150,000 a year, and other living
expenses during her projected 50-year life span, attorneys said. The jury
also found that the pharmaceutical error cost the girl 20 years of her
life. The verdict "will ensure that she'll get the best of care," said the
child's father, Naldo Cabanillas. "I expect her to walk and talk one day.
I'm an optimist." At a news conference in Santa Ana after the verdict was
announced, Bryn's father led the child by both hands.

She walked with a slump and could barely stand alone.

Her father held Bryn in his lap as they sat at a conference table, flanked
by the child's sister, Carrie, and her mother. Bryn seemed oblivious to the
media event, reaching for the microphones as if they were toys. "I just
think of today and tomorrow," said her father, a self-employed
architectural designer. "I cannot go back to the way things were. I lost my
daughter." Attorneys called the verdict the largest prescription
malpractice award in Orange County history. Bryn has cerebral palsy, which
was diagnosed shortly after she was adopted from Peru at birth.

In 1994, she suffered a respiratory infection that caused a seizure,
leading doctors to prescribe phenobarbital to prevent further attacks, said
Jay Cordell Horton, her attorney. But after taking the medicine, Bryn
became lethargic.

Her speech was slurred and her balance was off, said her mother, Jill
Cabanillas. She and her husband checked the prescribed pills, which
appeared a little larger than Bryn's usual medicine.

They took the child to a hospital, but doctors could find nothing wrong and
sent her home. Two days later, according to court testimony, the couple
could not wake their daughter.

They took her to the hospital, this time bringing the prescription drug
with them. At Children's Hospital of Orange County, a physician discovered
that the medicine was actually a 100-milligram dosage of phenobarbital,
rather than the 15-milligram dosage that had been prescribed and was
indicated on the pharmacy container.

"We were very upset," said Jill Cabanillas, 49. "But even then, we could
never have dreamed it would lead to something so horrible." Their daughter,
who before the incident had been scheduled to join regular school classes,
can no longer speak, get out of bed, pick out her clothes or brush her
teeth. The settlement, Horton said, will allow her parents "to explore
every avenue to try to rehabilitate her."

Attorneys for Thrifty Payless could not be reached for comment Wednesday.
During the trial, they brought in medical experts to testify that the
negligence did not cause injury to Bryn. Bryn's attorneys, however, called
eight medical experts to rebut those assertions and present detailed
evidence that showed a connection down to "the microscopic neuron level,"
Horton said. Attorneys said Bryn's parents had tried to get the drug chain
to help them with medical bills and other costs for three years before
filing the lawsuit in June 1997. "I hope that because of this lawsuit,
Payless and other drugstores will reevaluate their procedure . . . to
ensure that no other child will be injured by prescription mistakes," Jill
Cabanillas said.

Copyright Los Angeles Times

Checked-by: (Joel W. Johnson)