by KYW's Amy Feldman

A Florida college student died after ingesting the illegally-obtained drug Oxycontin, which he had gotten from a pharmacy technician who had stolen it from his employer, Eckert Drug.  The family sued Eckert, claiming that it had failed to maintain reasonable security measures that would have prevented the theft.  So the question is:  what is the legal responsibility of a company to protect an individual from his own stupidity.

It is clear that companies and individuals have an obligation to guard others against known dangers—a homeowner can be liable if a trespassing child drowns in his ungated swimming pool.  But where, as here, a grown man’s own illegal actions in taking a drug he was not prescribed led to his death, the company could not be held liable because the court believe  that wrongdoers would be able to shift responsibility of their illegal acts to others and would, in fact, be able to profit from them.  So the case was a loss that no doubt compounded a tragedy for the family, but may be seen as a victory for individual responsibility.