Vickery & Shepherd partner Andy Vickery was recently honored at the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) 50th Anniversary and Human Rights Awards celebration in Pasadena, CA. He received an award celebrating his exemplary courage in the fight for restoration of basic human rights in the field of mental health.
For more than 30 years, Andy has fought against pharmaceutical companies over the violence- and suicide-inducing effects of psychotropic drugs.
His precedent-setting judgment was the Tobin vs. SmithKline case. On June 6, 2001, a Wyoming jury found in favor of the plaintiff with a liability verdict against SmithKline. This was an important verdict returned against a pharmaceutical company in a trial about adverse behavioral effects of a physchotropic drug. In 2004, the FDA mandated black box warnings about the risk of antidepressant-induced suicidality, which SmithKline had denied, but which we proved to exist in the Tobin case.
The other CCHR award winner was Kevin Miller, a writer, producer and director of documentaries Generation Rx and Letters from Generation Rx, shining light on psychotropic drug damage.