Tobin v. SmithKline - Schell first suffered from his nerves in the mid-1980s

Tobin v. SmithKline






In February 1998, Donald Schell, a 60-year-old living in Gillette, Wyoming, became withdrawn and began to complain to his wife Rita of difficulty in sleeping. Schell first suffered from his nerves in the mid-1980s, with approximately five subsequent nervous episodes centred on work stressors or bereavements. Don and Rita appeared to most of those who knew them to be a close couple. They were married for 37 years. They had two children, Michael and Deborah. Deborah married Tim Tobin in 1992 and in 1997 she gave birth to the Schell’s first grandchild, Alyssa. Deborah and Alyssa, now nine months old, came down from Billings, Montana to stay for a few days with Don and Rita in February 1998.







Don’s means of handling his nerves was to take time off work, as he could easily get someone to deputize for him. He went for walks with his wife and spent time talking with friends or with Tim, if he was around, in addition to taking care of his diet. He had got on well with a Dr. Suhany in 1990, so if he remained low after a week or two, either Rita or Don himself would suggest going along to see the doctor. Suhany had first put Schell on Prozac and noted that it made him tense, anxious and jittery, despite the fact that he was on several antidotes such as Inderal, Ativan, and Desyrel. Suhany stopped Prozac and put Schell on imipramine, to which he responded rapidly.[lxxix] What Suhany didn’t know was that Schell might have even been hallucinating while on Prozac. Having responded to imipramine in 1990, in two further brief episodes in the 1990s Schell was put on tricyclic antidepressants and again responded rapidly.







In February of 1998, when Schell began to complain about his sleep, he and Rita went to see a primary care physician, Dr. Patel. Dr. Patel did a thorough examination, which included rating scales that indicated Schell’s main difficulty was poor sleep and that he felt hopeful about the future and thought well of himself. Patel diagnosed an anxiety state and, unaware of the significance of a prior adverse response to Prozac, put Schell on Paxil, without any covering antidotes. Forty-eight hours later Don Schell put three bullets from two different guns through Rita’s head, and then through Deborah and Alyssa’s heads before shooting himself.







After more than a year in a mental wilderness, Tim Tobin sought out Andy Vickery and took an action for wrongful death against SmithKline Beecham, then in the process of becoming Glaxo-SmithKline, the worlds largest pharmaceutical company. I was retained in the case.



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