A pharmacist fired for seeking "clarifications" of doctors' prescriptions over the phone can still get unemployment compensation, a Commonwealth Court panel ruled Wednesday.

There simply is no indication Stanley Semerod's actions amounted to willful misconduct, Senior Judge Dan Pellegrini concluded in the state court's opinion.

Semerod worked for Giant Eagle Inc. for nearly 28 years before being fired in January 2017 for violating a Giant Eagle policy that bars employees from "breaking the law," Pellegrini noted.

Giant Eagle claimed Semerod violated the state Pharmacy Code by having a technician call doctors to clarify contradictory orders on written prescriptions. The company cited the Pharmacy Code prohibition against pharmacy technicians taking prescriptions over the phone.

The Semerod case isn't so cut and dried, Pellegrini found. He noted Semerod didn't direct his subordinate to take a prescription by phone, but only to get information to make sense of written prescriptions Semerod already had in hand.

In one case, Semerod told the technician to find out if a birth control prescription was written for 21 or 28 days. In another, he sought clarification of a doctor's conflicting order regarding how often a patient should take a drug.

Giant Eagle appealed to Commonwealth Court after the state Unemployment Compensation Board of Review found Semerod eligible for jobless aid.

Pellegrini cited the board's conclusion that Semerod had not actually violated the Pharmacy Code. That code "does not explicitly mention the effect of a 'clarification' and/or 'modification' to an already existing prescription," the judge noted.

He added that without the clarifications Semerod sought, the contradictory prescriptions the pharmacist received were "effectively meaningless."