Posted on 02/22/2006 5:03:32 PM PST by wagglebee
When the retired doctor from Austin suddenly began spending big money in Las Vegas, the casinos assigned him a "host" and gave him first-class airfare, hotel suites, meals and shopping trips for his wife, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court in Austin.
The casinos even gave him an Alaskan cruise, the lawsuit says.
The retired doctor, Max Wells, kept coming back, the lawsuit says and kept losing money. By the fall of 2005, Wells had lost $7 million, the lawsuit says. By January, another $7 million.
Now Wells is suing the casinos and a major drug company, claiming that the prescription drugs he was taking for Parkinson's disease set off a compulsive gambling spree.
Wells, 55, wants his money back. He declined to comment Tuesday.
His lawsuit, filed Friday, says the drug company didn't warn patients that Requip could cause compulsive behavior. And it cites a 2005 Mayo Clinic study that documented 11 Parkinson's patients who developed compulsive gambling habits while taking Requip or a similar drug called Mirapex.
The gambling ceased for eight of the 11 when they stopped taking the drugs; test results were not available for the other three patients, the study said.
GlaxoSmithKline, which is referred to as SmithKline Beecham in the lawsuit the companies merged in 2000 said Tuesday that it had not yet been served with the lawsuit.
"We will certainly investigate the allegations when we receive the complaint," said Mary Anne Rhyne, a company spokeswoman. "We believe the drug is appropriately labeled."
The lawsuit claims the casinos knew that Wells had Parkinson's, a degenerative disorder that damages nerve cells and causes shaking, slowness and difficulty with balance.
Wells told the casinos he had Parkinson's and "was taking the medication while he was gambling," said his lawyer, Tom Thomas with Winstead Sechrest & Minick in Dallas.
The lawsuit says the casinos should have been aware of the Mayo study, which Thomas said was heavily publicized in Las Vegas last summer.
None of the seven casinos named in the lawsuit returned calls Tuesday. They are Mandalay, Treasure Island, Bellagio, Wynn Las Vegas, Las Vegas Sands, Harrah's Las Vegas and Hard Rock Hotel.
Wells, a retired pathologist, was diagnosed with Parkinson's in 2000, according to the lawsuit.
After taking Mirapex for several months in 2004, Wells "developed an irresistible compulsion to gamble," the lawsuit said, and lost several thousand dollars gambling in Las Vegas and on the Internet.
Thomas said Wells had previously been an occasional gambler.
After he told his doctor that he thought Mirapex was causing him to gamble, the doctor switched him to Requip and increased the dosage, the lawsuit said.
As Wells was losing $14 million which included about $1.2 million in IOUs called markers that Wells hasn't paid his wife was unaware of his losses because she wasn't gambling with him, Thomas said.
The last week of January, Wells' wife began to question him, and he confessed to the losses, the lawsuit said.
When his doctor took him off Requip, his gambling compulsion stopped, Thomas said.
Despite the losses Wells claims, he's not bankrupt, Thomas said.
"I would say he hasn't lost the farm, but he's lost the ranch," he said.
I've been taking Mirapex for several years (for periodic limb movement disorder and restless legs syndrome).
That said, I'm a horrible gambler. I don't even like to gamble. We play poker for chips, and I suck at that. I'm the most aggressive bluffer around.
When I told Xena's Guy this story, he said, "Maybe that's why you bluff like you do."
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
Maybe this explains me last weekend!
Well, that or the vodka.
Wells was a pathologist. If he ran a lab, or owned a lab, it was probably very lucrative for him and he may have ended up with the previously mentioned millions of dollars. Good for him. However, are we responsible for his stupidity to piss away $14,000,000.00 in gambling casinos? And then file a law suit to try to recover his money? I've got a whole drawer full of lottery tickets that I bought under the influence of euphoria thinking that I was going to win. I want my money back. BTW I know important people too. At least that is what they say.
Anyone remember when Leonard Tose the former owner of the Philly Eagles tried to do this? He lost and this guy will to.
Poker is the most boring game in the world if played correctly.
The casino will have this man's legs broken before he gets THEIR 14 million.
That will be the defense case right there..He should have known better as a Dr ( if you believe this at all)
opps... double post.. the mods will have MY legs broken :)
"And I'M Funny HOW!?
I enjoy going to casinos (my wife and I go to Vegas for a couple weeks every year), but I view it as pure entertainment. We figure out how much we are comfortable losing and that's what we stick to. I can sit down at a nickle poker machine and put twenty dollars in and have fun for an hour or so, if I double my money I get up, if I lose it I get up -- it's just for fun. In the end we generally lose about a thousand dollars over a two week period, the casino gives us a few free meals and we're happy.
But it is sad to watch the people in there who are obviously spending way more than they can afford. All it takes is one look at the opulence of just about any big casino and it it obvious that the only real winner will always be the casino.
I agree, and I have a feeling that Glaxo will give him some money just to escape the potential publicity of a trial.
Plus an extra copy in Spanish.
That's pretty harsh, considering you don't know where that money came from. You are accusing this man of stealing from his patients based on ZILCH. You should be embarrassed by your post.
I've already posted that him suing the casinos is ridiculous, but your post matches that.
Last night Xena's Guy and I saw a commercial for Lunesta, a sleep drug, and the disclaimer announced that one possible side effect was drowsiness.
That's why I bluff like a fiend.
I'll bet the lawyers didn't know he had fourteen million dollars to start with. They would have gotten it from him before he went to Las Vegas.
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