The plaintiff, who had been prescribed Zoloft and Ambien, “reportedly fell asleep while ‘inspecting’ his gun” and shot himself inadvertently on waking. He “is now suing his doctor for medical malpractice, saying that prescribing both an anti-depressant and a sleep aid together deviated from accepted standards of medical care. He has a separate product liability claim pending against the drug manufacturers.” [New Jersey Lawsuit Reform Alliance, FindACase]
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Well, at least–so far–he’s not suing the gun manufacturer, so something must be going right.
According to Mr. Justice Voith up in British Columbia (see Zawadski v. Calimoso), such an occurrence is certainly reasonably foreseeable and ought to be compensated.
Too bad for Mr. Buck that he didn’t shoot himself in Canada. Then again, had he done so, he would no doubt have been charged with a violation of the gun laws up there.
Huh.
Personal anecdote, I have had concurrent prescriptions of anti-depressants and Ambien.
Ambien instructions (along with a lot of precautions) are that one takes the medicine and goes to bed immediately.
It’ll be interesting to see if those drugs were prescribed intentionally by the doctor, or after repeated insistence by the plaintiff that he “just couldn’t sleep” and was in “constant 10/10 pain” and was “allergic to everything but Ambien and Zoloft”.
Prescribing an anti-depressant and a sleep aid concurrently is by no means a deviation from accepted medical practice. In some circumstances it is the norm.
Standard warnings include no operation of machinery or driving.
Cleaning the mechanism of a gun is included under this “no machinery” proscription.
His lawsuit against his doctor should hinge on whether his claim that “prescribing both an anti-depressant and a sleep aid together deviated from accepted standards of medical care” is correct. It could also hinge on whether or not his doctor warned him about the typical side-effects of these drugs (though I would imagine they would be well-known to any adult). Lawsuits against the drug manufactures seem obviously frivolous.
Wow…. Never heard of Remeron, have we?
That’s bizarre. Why hasn’t he sued the gun company?
I know it says “inspecting” in the excerpt, but for any of you who aren’t “gun people”…….
Never, ever, ever believe anybody’s claim that a shooting being described occurred when they were “cleaning a gun”. Yes, it’s of course possible. But the vanishingly low frequency with which people actually clean their guns, combined with the fact that the same folks managed not to shoot anybody during the (proportionally greater) time when they weren’t cleaning it, should radically raise your skepticism-o-meter.
Screwing around with a gun? Yes. Premeditated murder, knowing they could claim “I was cleaning it”? Absolutely. The notion of “It went off when I was cleaning it” is so entrenched in the heads of folks that it’s gotta be the handiest murder cover around.
Given the circumstances – he was depressed and he shot himself in the head – could this not have been an attempted suicide? That certainly makes more sense than the cockamamie story that he shot himself when he tried to answer a phone call.
Yeah, I’d be betting on attempted suicide.
Gun owners know step #1 in cleaning *any* firearm is “make sure weapon is unloaded”. Besides the obvious safety issues, several firearms require pulling the trigger as part of the disassembly process, and passing the cleaning patches from the chamber through the barrel is physically impossible if there is a round in the chamber.