A WOMAN who became depressed and suicidal after being given eight times her normal dose of steroids by a High Street pharmacy chain has won her claim for compensation.

The High Court ruled yesterday that Lloyds Pharmacy negligently dispensed a prescription to the Rev Cathy Horton, a priest and corporate lawyer.

Ms Horton, 44, is claiming £5 million after the consultancy business she was setting up collapsed when she became depressed after taking the steroids. She suffered weight gain, “moon face”, puffy eyes, hair loss and ended up in the Priory clinic, where she tried to hang herself with a computer cable.

Mr Justice Keith said he would rule on the amount Ms Horton, a “woman of many achievements”, should be awarded at a later date.

In July 2001, Dr Timothy Evans, who practises in Earlsfield, South London, prescribed 28 days’ supply of 4mg dexamethasone, eight times Ms Horton’s proper maintenance dose of 0.5mg. Ms Horton, who worked for the US law firm Squire, Sanders & Dempsey and earned £290,000 a year, has already settled a compensation claim against the doctor.

The prescription, intended to supplement Ms Horton’s adrenal deficiency, was dispensed without question by a Lloyds Pharmacy in South Croydon, where Ms Horton lived at the time. As 4mg tablets were not available in the UK, the pharmacy gave her 55 2mg doses, a near equivalent to the amount prescribed.

Ms Horton, an American citizen who lives in Ohio, had for years taken 0.5mg doses of the drug and, unaware of any difference, took the 2mg tablets daily until the end of July.

When she returned to the United States at the end of the month, a doctor there continued to prescribe 4mg tablets after reading the label on the Lloyds bottle.

The judge said: “The claimant, Cathy Horton, is a woman of many accomplishments: lawyer, businesswoman, athlete and priest. But things changed dramatically for her in 2001 after she was misprescribed some medication for a minor ailment. Her life went into a downward spiral, from which she claims she is only now emerging.”

The judge said he had no doubt that what the pharmacist, N’Guessan Gabla, manager of the Lloyds branch, should have done was to follow the instructions in the branch manual and question the correctness of the prescription. “Had he done that, the GP’s mistake would have been discovered. In failing to do that, Mr Gabla fell below the standards which could reasonably have been expected of a reasonably careful and competent pharmacist.”

He added: “It should have occurred to him that this prescription may have been a mistake.”

The judge accepted that the “dramatic deterioration” in Ms Horton’s health did not result from the 2mg tablets dispensed by Mr Gabla. Her grave symptoms began only after she returned to America and was prescribed 4mg tablets by a doctor who had read the Lloyd’s Pharmacy bottle. However, he ruled there was nevertheless “a direct causal link between Mr Gabla’s breach of duty in failing to question the correctness of the prescription” and the American doctor providing Ms Horton with 4mg tablets.

He said that Lloyds had brought “contribution proceedings” against the doctor, which had been settled.

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