2023-12-20 16:41:31
This is the conclusion of an appeal trial which lasted six months. The Servier group, which marketed Mediator, a drug used as an appetite suppressant accused of having caused serious cardiovascular lesions, was sentenced on Wednesday December 20 on appeal to a total fine of more than 9 million euros and to reimburse more than 415 million euros to Social Security organizations and mutual societies.
The pharmaceutical group was found guilty of all the offenses with which it was accused, including those of fraud and improperly obtaining marketing, for which it was acquitted at first instance. The court of appeal confirmed Servier’s guilt for the offenses of aggravated deception and homicide and involuntary injury.
The six companies making up the Servier group were sentenced, in total, to fines of 9.173 million euros.
Jean-Philippe Seta, former right-hand man of the all-powerful founder of the group, Jacques Servier (died in 2014), and the only natural person defendant in the appeal trial, was sentenced to four years in prison, including one year, to carried out under an electronic bracelet and a total fine of almost 90,000 euros.
The court did not follow the prosecution’s requisitions, which requested the confiscation of the profits of Servier linked to Mediator, i.e. 182 million euros, arguing that this risked “to endanger the group”.
Concerning the health insurance funds and mutual societies, the court ordered Servier to pay them the sum of more than 415 million euros for financial damage, more than 1 million euros for loss of disorganization and more than 5 million euros in procedural costs.
Heart damage and pulmonary arterial hypertension
“This is a huge victory for the victims that I represent and defend since the first complaint in November 2010”commented Charles-Joseph Oudin, one of the lawyers for the more than 7,000 civil parties.
During the detailed presentation of the judgment, the president of the court, Olivier Géron, noted that the laboratory had “privileged his financial interest over the interests of patients”.
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Mediator, marketed in 1976 for the treatment of diabetes but widely misused as an appetite suppressant, has been prescribed to some five million people. It was withdrawn from the market in 2009, after a link with heart damage and pulmonary arterial hypertension was established by pulmonologist Irène Frachon. He is held responsible for hundreds of deaths.
In total, 7,650 people became civil parties to the trial, most of them in the deception aspect. Some 5,000 other cases for homicides or involuntary injuries are still being investigated by the Paris prosecutor’s office, paving the way for a probable second Mediator trial in the coming years.
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