State charges CVS with selling expired goods

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal charged Monday in a lawsuit that CVS Pharmacy Inc. has been selling expired food, beverages and over-the-counter medicines at some of its Connecticut stores, including three in the region.

Blumenthal said his investigation found that nearly half of CVS stores surveyed statewide - including ones in Old Saybrook, Waterford and New London - have been selling expired products. That's about twice the number of CVS stores found to be selling expired products in a similar investigation last year.

"Especially appalling is the sale of expired baby formula," Blumenthal said in a statement. "CVS' failure to properly police and supervise its shelves - allowing out-of-date medicine and potentially rotten food to remain - is unconscionable and unacceptable."

CVS said in a statement that it has a clear product-removal policy in all of its stores, and that the health and safety of customers is its top priority.

"Any unintentional deviations from this policy that are brought to the company's attention are quickly rectified for customers," said the CVS statement. "The company is fully committed to maintaining inventory management practices to prevent expired products from being sold to customers."

Blumenthal, who said he filed suit in Hartford Superior Court in cooperation with the state Department of Consumer Protection, began investigating CVS last year after receiving complaints about expired products. Investigators initially visited 40 stores and found 10 that sold expired products; a follow-up investigation this year of 45 stores found 20 selling items past their expiration dates.

"We have continuing, active investigations regarding CVS and other companies," Blumenthal said.

In a phone interview, Blumenthal would not comment on how many products in each of the local stores were found to have been left on shelves past their expiration dates, and he would not reveal which local CVS outlets were found to have no expired products. He said the most common products past their expiration dates were cough medicines, allergy remedies, baby formulas, antacids and dairy products.

Blumenthal's findings are consistent with those in other states. Complaints about CVS keeping expired products on its shelves in New York, for instance, led to an $875,000 settlement last month with New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.

In May, a coalition of activist groups in Connecticut called for a similar investigation, charging that 55 percent of CVS stores surveyed in Fairfield County were selling products past their expiration dates.

"Most disturbing about the sale of expired goods at CVS is it clearly seems to be the way they do business rather than a few isolated incidents," said Phil Sherwood, deputy director of the Connecticut Citizen Action Group, in a statement at the time.

Activists looking to reform the drugstore industry have targeted CVS, the Woonsocket, R.I.-based drug retailer, because of its leadership position in terms of size and number of prescriptions dispensed. The groups have developed a Web site, www.CureCVSNow.org, where, among other things, CVS customers can post pictures of expired products on store shelves.

"The company was clearly on notice about the problem and failed to act," Blumenthal said.

Matthew Mireles, president and chief executive of Texas-based Community Medical Foundation for Patient Safety, said the problem with selling expired over-the-counter medications is that they become less effective over time. The expiration date, he said, is the official point at which the manufacturer and the federal Food and Drug Administration can guarantee a medicine being at least 90 percent effective.

"The question is, if it's not effective, is it also a safety problem?" Mireles said.

The only drug known to be toxic beyond its expiration date, he said, is tetracycline, an antibiotic first discovered by a Pfizer Inc. researcher that is now used mostly in acne medications. But Mireles said selling medicines could open up companies to liability claims if someone had an allergic reaction to the drug, and he added that selling expired infant formula "may pose some kind of threat to the digestive system."

Mireles said CVS' problems could be related to "lack of operational oversight and poor inventory monitoring." But Blumenthal said whether the expired products were the result of carelessness or a willful act, the company still needs to address the issue head-on to ensure consumers are protected.

Blumenthal's lawsuit, charging consumer-protection and unfair-trade-practices violations, seeks monetary penalties of up to $5,000 for each illegal act and an order barring CVS from selling expired products.

"The total penalties could be substantial - in the hundreds of thousands of dollars," Blumenthal said.