Society’s striking-off decision is upheld by the High Court
Two pharmacists who launched a hate campaign against a wholesaler were rightly ordered to be struck off the Register of Pharmaceutical Chemists, the High Court has ruled (PJ, 26 February, p252).
Mr Justice Newman said that Christopher and Jane Chanin’s campaign
against Unichem Ltd was highly offensive, threatening and abusive and
that the decision to strike them off was entirely justified.
The Chanins, of Whinmoor Close, Prenton, Merseyside, used images of the
Grim Reaper and referred to Exocet missiles and the Vietcong during a
financial dispute with Unichem.
In October last year the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s Statutory
Committee ruled that they had brought the profession into disrepute and
ordered that their names be erased from the Register.
The judge said that he was unimpressed with a suggestion that these communications
did not amount to abusive and threatening conduct of a serious nature.
Their previous good standing and community support were only of limited
relevance. Their behaviour plainly justified erasure and the Society’s
duty to protect the reputation of the profession took priority over any
personal mitigation they had put forward.
Dismissing the couple’s appeal, ordering them to pay the Society’s
legal costs and upholding the decision to strike them off, the judge
concluded: “In my judgment, no other penalty would have been appropriate.”
The Chanins’ names were removed from the Register immediately after
the ruling on 23 May (see p664). A spokesman for the Chanins said that
the case would now be taken to the European Court of Human Rights. |
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