$8 Million Verdict Against Paxil Maker After Gillette Family Killings

On February 13, 1998, Donald Schell, a 60-year-old man from Gillette, Wyoming, was prescribed Paxil for anxiety and sleep trouble. Within 48 hours of taking the medication, he shot and killed his wife Rita, his daughter Deborah Tobin, and his nine-month-old granddaughter Alyssa Tobin before taking his own life.

The families of the victims brought a wrongful death lawsuit against SmithKline Beecham, the drug's manufacturer, arguing that Paxil carried an unrevealed risk of inducing extreme violence in some patients and that the company had failed to warn prescribing physicians of that risk. Plaintiffs also presented evidence that Schell had a documented prior adverse reaction to another antidepressant, Prozac, a fact available to his prescribing doctor.

Jim Fitzgerald of Fitzgerald Law Offices in Cheyenne served as co-trial counsel alongside lead attorney Andy Vickery of Vickery and Waldner in Houston. The case, styled Estates of Tobin ex rel. Tobin v. SmithKline Beecham Pharmaceuticals, was tried before a federal jury on theories of product liability and negligent failure to warn.

On June 6, 2001, the jury returned a verdict for the plaintiffs. Jurors found specifically that Paxil can cause some individuals to commit homicide or suicide and that it was a proximate cause of the deaths of all four members of the Schell family. The jury assigned 80 percent of the fault to SmithKline Beecham and 20 percent to Donald Schell himself. Total damages came to $8 million, with the largest individual awards going to Tim Tobin, Deborah's husband, who received $2.5 million for each of the two deaths in his immediate family.

The district court later denied SmithKline Beecham's post-trial motion for judgment as a matter of law or a new trial, leaving the verdict intact. No public record of an appellate reduction has been located. The case was among the first in the United States to result in a plaintiff's verdict establishing a causal link between an SSRI antidepressant and drug-induced homicide.