A Case for Tort Reform
FoxNews.com
DALLAS — Near the end of her short life, Shayla Stewart, a diagnosed manic-depressive and schizophrenic, assaulted police officers and was arrested for attacking a fellow customer at a Denton Wal-Mart where she had a prescription for anti-psychotic medication. Given all those signs, her parents say, another Wal-Mart just seven miles away should have never sold her the shotgun she used to kill herself at age 24 in 2003. Her mother, Lavern Bracy, is suing the world's biggest
store chain for $25 million, saying clerks should have known about her
daughter's illness or done more to find out.
But pharmacy prescription records are confidential under a 1996 federal law, so stores cannot use them when deciding whether to sell a gun. Also, Wal-Mart did a background check on Stewart, as required under federal law, but through no fault of its own, her name did not show up in the FBI database. The reason: The database contains no mental health records from Texas and 37 other states.
Texas does not submit mental health records because state law deems them confidential, said Paul Mascot, an attorney with the Texas Department of State Health Services. Other states have not computerized their record-keeping systems or do not store them in a central location for use by the FBI.Michael Faenza, president and chief executive of the National Mental Health Association, applauds Texas' refusal to share information with the FBI database. He said it would not be fair to violate patients' privacy when there is no data to support claims that mentally ill people are more violent than others.
Tragic as this case is, Wal-Mart is not at fault by any stretch of the imagination. Wal-Mart followed the law in performing a background check. Under privacy law, perscription records are confidential. It is not the fault of Wal-Mart that Texas statute forbids the admittance of percription records into the FBI database. While I am not belittiling the tradegy, or even claiming no one is at fault, becuase there is blame to be had by a broken, hypocritcal system, I just want to make the argument that Wal-Mart, as a company, should not held liable for a death that they did not share fault in. Imagine the case where a man is denied his right to buy a car because he is an alcoholic, or where a woman is not allowed to buy peanut butter for her kids because she has an allergy bracelet. The car dealership, in reality, would not be held legally liable for the man's death or the death of others should be drive while intoxicated, nay the liquer store that sold him the alcohol would not even be sued. This may be an extreme case, for sure, but this is the future we face if frivolous lawsuits like this are allowed to continue.
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