A Deschutes County Circuit Court decision to dismiss a $34.5 million wrongful death lawsuit filed by the family of Bend cyclist Marika Stone, who was killed by drugged driver Shantel Witt in 2017, was reversed by the Oregon Court of Appeals on Wednesday.

Witt, who changed her last name to Olsen in 2022, was driving east of Bend while under the influence of 11 different drugs, both prescribed and unprescribed, when she collided with 38-year-old Stone, who was cycling with friends, killing her instantly.

The state appeals court ruled Wednesday the Deschutes County court was wrong to dismiss the lawsuit. It was originally filed in April 2018 on behalf of Stone, her spouse Jerry Stone and her surviving children, who are now 14 and 12. The appeals court judge returned the case to Deschutes County Circuit Court for review, which could result in a trial after the obligatory 35-day review period.

Appeals Court Judge Robyn Aoyagi wrote in the decision that the court agrees with the Stone family’s argument. Physicians, medical providers and pharmacies who all took part in prescribing a potent combination of drugs to Olsen not only created a risk of harm to Olsen “but also unreasonably created a foreseeable risk of physical injury to a third party,” the decision read.

Previous coverage

Witt guilty of first-degree manslaughter, acted with “extreme indifference”

$34 million lawsuit alleges doctors overprescribed drugs to woman who killed Bend cyclist

“The world doesn’t exist in a place where doctors and hospitals aren’t aware of the risk of using these drugs,” Nathan Steele, a longtime attorney for Stone’s estate, told The Bulletin Wednesday.

He added: “And that’s why doctors are given the right to prescribe things, but they’re also given the responsibility to do it in a way that protects their patient (and) foreseeable injury that could be caused to third parties.”

On Dec. 30, 2017, Olsen was driving her GMC Sierra on Dodds Road east of Bend when she hit and killed Stone, a dentist in Bend and an avid athlete. Olsen then proceeded to swear at and berate the cyclists who accompanied Stone, according to The Bulletin archive. Olsen failed three field sobriety tests at the time of her arrest, and toxicology reports later revealed a slew of drugs in her system, including Xanax prescribed for her dog.

A Deschutes County jury convicted Olsen in February 2019 of first-degree manslaughter and four misdemeanors. She was sentenced to 10 years in prison with an earliest possible release date in 2030.

While Olsen was in the midst of her criminal case, the Stone family filed a wrongful death suit in Deschutes County in April 2018 against Olsen, three Bend doctors, four Central Oregon health clinics and major pharmacy operators Albertsons and Walgreens.

The suit alleged the medical providers enabled Olsen’s prescription drug abuse, which ultimately led to Stone’s death.

Named parties in the original suit included doctors Kevin Rueter, Nancy Brennan and Laura Schweger, and local health clinics High Lakes Health Care, St. Charles Family Care, High Desert Personal Medicine and Mosaic Community Health, formerly known as Mosaic Medical. Schweger and High Lakes Health were not parties to the state appeal.

A Deschutes County judge dismissed the wrongful death lawsuit in 2021 on the premise that a medical provider couldn’t be liable for harm to a third party if that third party wasn’t their patient. In this case, the circuit court ruled that since Stone wasn’t the doctors’ patient or prescribed any medication, those doctors, medical clinics and pharmacies weren’t responsible for her death. Several of the circuit court’s dismissals were appealed in 2021.

An appellate attorney for the Stone family, Kathryn Clark of Portland, told The Bulletin on Wednesday she thinks the appeals court decision will have future impacts.

“This one struck me the minute I saw this case,” Clark said.

From the beginning, she thought it might be a tool to clarify an area of Oregon law in which physicians can be held liable for harm to third parties, she said.

“In fact, that’s exactly what it did,” she said.Attorneys for Mosaic Community Health and Walgreens declined to comment.

High Desert Personal Medicine is now defunct, and it’s owner and chief practitioner, Kevin Rueter apparently moved to California, according to previous reporting by The Bulletin. His attorneys did not respond to The Bulletin’s requests for comment Wednesday.

Alandra Johnson, a spokesperson for St. Charles, told The Bulletin the company is reviewing the court’s decision and declined to comment further.