Ex-officer: Drug drove me crazy
By BRENDAN BERLS
 

Herald Staff Writer


A former West Orange police officer claims in a new lawsuit that medicine prescribed to him at Newton Memorial Hospital two years ago drove him to madness, causing him to charge into his neighbors house and hold them at gunpoint, convinced they were gang members.
William Koehler, 41, of Andover Township, is suing the hospital, the doctor who treated him there and the maker of the drug he was prescribed for bronchitis in February 2003. He claims the drug, Levaquin, reacted with the ibuprofen he was already taking for a cold and caused an acute psychosis.
According to the 12-page complaint, filed last week in Sussex County Superior Court, Koehler, who at the time lived in Newton and was an officer in the West Orange Police Department, went to the emergency room at the hospital on Feb. 12, 2003, after two days of feeling sick.
He was treated by Dr. Fred Revoredo, who diagnosed him with acute bronchitis and prescribed him Levaquin, an antibiotic used to treat various infections.
The lawsuit states that Koehler began feeling restless, anxious, confused and paranoid by Feb. 14, after two days on Levaquin.
More specifically, plaintiff began compulsive cleaning of his home and prepared his home for a possible terrorist attack, the lawsuit states. He placed all his clothes, tools, paperwork and food into plastic baggies.
The next day, February 15, 2003, plaintiff began walking around the house with a gun looking for intruders.
Koehler continued this behavior the next day pacing in his house with a gun, emptying cabinets and pulling appliances out of the walls. On Feb. 17, the suit claims he began hallucinating.
At approximately 5 p.m., believing that his neighbors were involved in major drug/gang criminal activity, plaintiff barged into his neighbor s home and held three people at gunpoint, the lawsuit states.
In an interview with The New Jersey Herald the day after that incident, Chris Carman, one of the three people in the house, said Koehler, after forcing them to lie on the floor, tossed a cell phone to a person on the sidewalk outside and ordered him to call the police.
He was pointing a gun at us and saying, Get the (expletive) on the ground, Carman said. Our dog a yellow lab came out and he was pointing the gun at the dog saying, If that dog comes near me I m going to shoot it. The guy was just crazy.
When Newton police arrived, according to the lawsuit, Koehler told them: I think one of them got away. I don t know where the other one went. I m on the job.
Authorities at the time said Koehler briefly waved his gun in the air before complying with officers instructions to toss the weapon and get face down on the porch.
Koehler was charged with burglary, aggravated assault with a weapon, making terroristic threats and possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose, and was placed on paid leave by the West Orange Police Department.
According to the lawsuit, he was later fired and spent three months in jail.
Koehler is seeking unspecified damages for medical malpractice against Newton Memorial Hospital and Revoredo, claiming they should have informed him that Levaquin has been known to cause severe physical and psychological impairments.
He also seeks damages against drug-maker Ortho-McNeil Inc. and its parent company, Johnson & Johnson, for selling a defective drug with inadequate warnings.
According to its Web site, Levaquin s warning label lists among its possible side effects tremors, restlessness, anxiety, lightheadedness, confusion, hallucinations, paranoia, depression, nightmares, insomnia, and rarely, suicidal thoughts or acts.

Doug Arbesfeld, an Ortho-McNeil spokesman, said nothing in the label mentions ibuprofen or its possible effects on someone taking Levaquin.

Arbesfeld said that he could not comment further on anything involved with a lawsuit.