Walgreen's faces $16M penalty for illegal record dumping

The Walgreens drugstore chain will pay $16.6 million to settle a California case involving improper disposal of hazardous waste, including confidential patient information, in dumpsters near their stores.

Among the waste found by investigators were "90 different pieces of evidence" featuring patient records, including prescription receipts and pill bottles containing patient names, dates of birth, drug names, prescription record numbers and other information, said Karen Doty, San Diego County deputy district attorney and head of the district attorney's environmental protection unit, according to a Dec. 13 article in the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Alameda Superior Court ordered Walgreens to pay the monetary penalty as part of a settlement between the retailer and 42 California district attorneys and two city attorneys. The judgment is the culmination of a civil enforcement lawsuit that contends that more than 600 Walgreens stores throughout the state unlawfully handled and disposed of hazardous waste for more than six years.

Before the settlement, the Alameda court also issued a permanent injunction "to prohibit future violations" of improper environmental waste and medical record disposal by Walgreens, Doty said. "The California prosecutors' permanent injunction requires Walgreens to take all reasonable steps to destroy, or arrange for the destruction of, customers' records within its custody or control which contain confidential medical information that is no longer to be retained by the business in a manner that preserves the confidentiality," Doty told the Union-Tribune.