Judge orders insurer to pay interest on damage award

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Millions of dollars in insurance money could become available to victims of an ex-pharmacist convicted of diluting chemotherapy drugs.

Pharmacists Mutual Insurance Co., which insured Robert Courtney, was ordered Wednesday by a judge to pay interest on part of a huge damage award.

Courtney is serving a 30-year sentence for diluting cancer drugs that he prepared and dispensed from his Research Medical Tower Pharmacy in Kansas City.

He pleaded guilty last year to adulterating 158 chemotherapy doses of the drugs Taxil and Gemzar for 34 patients from March 2001 through June 2001. But he admitted in his plea agreement that he began diluting drugs in 1992, possibly affecting as many as 4,200 patients and 98,000 prescriptions.

Senior Judge Lee Wells of Jackson County Circuit Court ruled Wednesday that Pharmacists Mutual was liable for the interest on part of a $330 million judgment awarded to Georgia Hayes, an ovarian cancer patient who received diluted drugs from Courtney and later sued him.

Wells on Wednesday said that Pharmacists Mutual's policies covered post-judgment interest on the compensatory portion of the award. At the statutory rate of 9 percent, that amounts to about $2.7 million.

The ruling is significant because about 500 other cancer patients or their families have sued Courtney. None of those cases has been tried yet because lawyers have been awaiting the outcome of the litigation over Courtney's insurance.

Wells also ruled that Pharmacists Mutual would have to pay up to $27 million of the $30.1 million compensatory portion of the Hayes judgment.