CVS falsely accuses Latino man of stealing -- and his wife gets hospitalized when they refuse to fill her meds: lawsuit

A family in California has filed a lawsuit against CVS after one of its stores falsely accused them of shoplifting and refused to fill their medications, which resulted in one family member being taken to the hospital.

The Stockton Record reports that Vincent Mares and his wife, Lorina Fermaint, went to their local CVS earlier this year to pick up Fermaint's prescription for asthma medicine.

However, a worker at the store soon told her that they could not fill her prescription because her husband had supposedly shoplifted from their store.

"The managers explained that loss prevention staff had reviewed surveillance tapes and identified Mares as having taken merchandise from the store," the Stockton Record reports. "Furthermore, the managers told Fermaint they wouldn’t release anything to her — not her medications even though she was plainly suffering, and not the prescriptions the doctor had written."

The couple then went to the police and told them that they had been falsely accused and were in desperate need of Fermaint's medication. The police called the store and a manager informed them that they now did not believe that Mares had shoplifted, but they still wouldn't sell the family any medication because they had been "red tagged."

Later that night, Fermaint suffered from an asthma attack and was treated at a nearby emergency room.

Fermaint tells the Stockton Record that she is suing CVS in part to determine whether he husband was racially profiled as a gang member.

"[Mares is] a very hard worker and a family man who is of Latino descent and has tattoos on his body," she said. "To flat out lie about him really made me question their motives and what was behind that. Was he profiled?"

Read more about the lawsuit at this link.