A mess situation, but interesting too. Technically, the people who took them off the shelves and used them are responsible for the debt. But, it does seem to me like an ideal time for the shop to step in and say 'the items are complementary in this case as a symbol of our care for our customers'. Publicity is important in business, and while 'all publicity is good publicity' is true to an extent, positive publicity is much much better than negative publicity. I can imagine some people might choose to no longer shop there after reading this story, or hearing about it in exaggerated, second hand ways.

If this happened in the USA, wouldn't there be a potential law suit if the situation was established that Walgreens do not permit life-saving merchandise to be used in emergency situations without being paid for? Not that I support such frivolous law suits, but in the land of McDonalds being legally responsible for their customers' obesity, I think almost anything is a possible law suit, meaning potential millions in damages.

Then again, perhaps there is already some legal precedent from a similar case - no idea on that.