For many years GlaxoSmithKline and its predecessor, SmithKline Beecham, marketed Paxil as an antidepressant that would reduce the risk of suicide in depressed patients. The results of the company’s clinical trials, presented to the Food and Drug Administration in 1989, suggested Paxil was far safer than a placebo.

Back then, the company reported that among nearly 3,000 patients treated with Paxil in the worldwide clinical trials, five committed suicide — a rate of about one in 600. By contrast, there were two suicides in a much smaller group of 554 patients randomly assigned to take a placebo pill — a rate of about one in 275, more than double that of the Paxil group.

But documents made public in the course of the lawsuit filed against Glaxo by Wendy Dolin, who alleges that paroxetine, a generic form of Paxil, contributed to the suicide of her husband, Stewart, suggest an alternate view.

Ms. Dolin’s lawyers argue that the documents show the two suicides in the placebo group occurred during the “wash out” or “run-in” period, when patients about to enter a new clinical trial are weaned from prior medications — before the new trial officially got started and before “randomization,” when trial participants are randomly assigned either to the placebo group or the drug group. That transition period is known to be an especially risky time for patients.