## Facts

- Parents obtained an antibiotic prescription (Ceclor) for their two-month-old infant.
- The pharmacy negligently mistranscribed the physician’s dosage instructions and labeled the medication with directions calling for a substantially higher dose.
- The parents administered the medication according to the pharmacy label.
- After multiple doses, the parents observed the infant’s lethargy and learned the dosage directions were erroneous and had caused an overdose and injury.
- The parents alleged severe emotional distress upon realizing that their own administration of the drug, in reliance on the label, contributed to their child’s injury.
- The parents sought damages for their emotional distress, not for the child’s physical injuries in the posture presented.

## Issues

1. Whether a pharmacy that negligently mislabels an infant’s prescription owes a duty of care to the parents as “direct victims,” allowing recovery for negligent infliction of emotional distress apart from a bystander theory.

## Decision

- The California Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeal and reinstated summary judgment for the pharmacy.
- The Court held the pharmacy’s professional duty in accurately filling and labeling the prescription was owed to the patient (the infant), not to the parents as independent “direct victims.”
- The parents’ emotional distress, though foreseeable, was treated as derivative of the child’s injury and did not establish a separate duty to the parents.
- The Court distinguished cases recognizing direct-victim recovery where the defendant owed an independent duty directly to the plaintiff (such as a physician’s duty to a patient-parent in obstetrical care).
- Policy concerns supported limiting liability to avoid expanding health-care provider exposure to claims by nonpatients.

## Legal Principles

- “Direct victim” NIED recovery requires breach of a duty owed independently to the plaintiff; foreseeability of emotional harm alone is insufficient.
- A pharmacist’s duty of due care in filling and labeling prescriptions generally runs to the patient for whom the prescription is written.
- Emotional distress suffered by relatives or caregivers from injury to the patient is generally derivative and not recoverable as direct-victim NIED absent an independent duty to the claimant.
- Courts may consider limiting principles and liability consequences in defining the scope of duty in medical and pharmaceutical negligence.

## Conclusion

The court held that parents who administered medication according to a negligently mislabeled prescription for their infant could not recover emotional-distress damages as direct victims because the pharmacy’s duty was owed to the child as the patient, and the parents’ distress was derivative of the child’s injury rather than based on a separate duty to them.


Huggins v. Longs Drug Stores Cal., Inc., 6 Cal. 4th 124 (Cal. 1993)