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Saturday 1 October 2011

Judge dismisses murderer's lawsuit claiming Prozac prompted him to murder his father

Kurt Danysh won’t get a chance to argue in federal court that the anti-depressant drug Prozac prompted him to murder his father 15 years ago.

http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2011/09/post_249.html



A simple matter of timing has short-circuited a lawsuit the Susquehanna County convict lodged in U.S. Middle District Court against one of the world’s largest drug manufacturers.

Danysh waited too long to file his product liability case against Prozac’s maker, Eli Lilly & Co., Judge John E. Jones III ruled in ordering dismissal of the complaint.



(AP Photo/The Indianapolis Star, Matt Dtrich)A 20 mg version of Prozac, made by Eli Lilly and Co. Eli Lilly officials have denied any links between Prozac and homicidal behavior. They have insisted that the drug, which was introduced in the U.S. in 1987, reduces violent tendencies.

Danysh, 33, is serving a 22½-to-60-year sentence at the state prison at Frackville. He pleaded guilty to third-degree murder a year after his father’s slaying. Numerous appeals of his conviction have failed.

In filing suit against Eli Lilly a year ago, Danysh repeated a claim he has made since he was arrested for slaying his dad with a stolen gun in 1996 — that he was under the influence of Prozac and out of control when he pulled the trigger.

Eli Lilly officials have denied any links between Prozac and homicidal behavior. They have insisted that the drug, which was introduced in the U.S. in 1987, reduces violent tendencies.

The U.S. Food & Drug Administration requires that Prozac’s labeling include a warning that anti-depressant drugs can cause suicidal thoughts in some children, teens and young adults.

Danysh was 18 when he shot his father. He claimed that he had started taking Prozac by prescription shortly before the killing.

His suit originally was filed against Eli Lilly in Dauphin County Court, but the drug maker, which is based in Indiana, had it transferred it to federal court.

In voiding Danysh’s complaint, Jones agreed with federal Magistrate Judge Mildred E. Methvin, who evaluated the case, that the suit was filed outside the two-year statute of limitations allowed in Pennsylvania for lodging such cases.

Eli Lilly had urged dismissal on those grounds, noting that Danysh has been making his allegations regarding Prozac since 1996. The drug maker argued that the statute of limitations began running at that time.

Danysh, who represented himself in the case, argued in vain that the time limit should not have begun ticking until 2008. That was when he received DNA test results showing he has a liver enzyme deficiency that leaves him at risk of “violent Prozac-induced behavior,” he said.

Jones concluded that Danysh’s attempt to make 2008 the starting point for the statute “is contrary to the position taken by Danysh throughout his criminal case that Prozac caused him to shoot his father.”

When Danysh filed his suit, Roseann B. Termini, an adjunct professor and food and drug law expert at Widener Law School, cited it as being among a handful of court cases over claims that anti-depressants prompted someone to kill.

Such cases are difficult to prove because there is little, if any means to link the use of those drugs to violent behavior in a specific person, she said.

One such case was fought out in state court in Kentucky over a mass killing by a Prozac user in September 1989.

Joseph T. Wesbecker, a Prozac user who was on disability for mental illness, fatally shot eight people at a Louisville printing company where he had worked, then killed himself.

Survivors of the shooting sued Eli Lilly, but a jury ruled in favor of the firm. Years later it was learned that the company and plaintiffs reached a confidential settlement before the trial ended.


Related topics: anti-depressant, eli lilly and co., prozac





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