Local Law Firms Home > Medical Malpractice News > Family Announces Plans to Press Charges "They wish to ensure that everybody and anybody who did anything to harm their mother should be held liable and should have to pay," Ray said. Taccetta and three other people were fatally wounded by a gunman who walked into the pharmacy and began shooting, then filled a backpack full of narcotics and fled the scene. David Laffer was taken into custody days later. His wife, who admitted driving the getaway vehicle, is serving 25 years in jail. The murders raised alarm throughout the country about the increasing issue of prescription painkiller abuse and prompted many follow-up investigations. The claim filed in state Supreme Court in Riverhead, N.Y., accused drug manufacturer Abbott Laboratories of neglecting to monitor the distribution of painkillers, such as hydrocodone and oxycodone. Ray said the corporation should have been aware that some doctors were prescribing abnormal amounts of the painkillers. A spokesman for Abbott Laboratories said that Vicodin and hydrocodone with acetaminophen drugs have been available for more than 30 years and have a vital role in pain control. He said the business works closely with Partnership for a Drug-Free America, the National Association of Drug Diversion Investigators and other specialists to create education, intervention and monitoring programs. "Generic forms of immediate-release Vicodin have been available since the 1980s and Abbott's Vicodin brand accounts for less than 1 percent of all prescriptions filled for hydrocodone with acetaminophen products," Scott Stoffel said. The Suffolk County law enforcement department and its previous commissioner, Richard Dormer, were listed as defendants because, Ray stated, police neglected to follow through on an investigation of a theft reported by Laffer's mother prior to the murders.
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