Servier Faces Paris Manslaughter Trial Over Alleged Drug Deaths

(Bloomberg) -- Les Laboratoires Servier stands trial in Paris on Monday charged with offenses including corporate manslaughter following as many as 2,000 deaths allegedly linked to the sale of its Mediator drug.

Paris judges have carved out more than half a year of courtroom time to scrutinize the scandal over the diabetes treatment that was widely used as an appetite suppressant and sold in France for 33 years. A government medicine safety agency as well as 14 suspects are also on trial on accusations ranging from aggravated deceit to manslaughter.

Servier said it acknowledges and regrets that patients suffered because of taking Mediator and has been focusing on compensating victims.

“To consider that the Laboratoires knew the risks linked to this drug and that they knowingly gave it to patients is for them an intolerable accusation,” Francois de Castro, a lawyer for Servier, said in an email. He said the drugmaker wants to explain why it hadn’t identified any risks before 2009, when Mediator was pulled from the French market over concerns it caused heart-valve damage.

It was only a year later that public outrage began to grow after the medicine safety agency, now known as ANSM, revealed the product might have caused multiple deaths. The scandal sparked criminal investigations and an overhaul of how France’s drug industry is regulated.

France’s ANSM, in charge of assessing drug safety, said in a statement it will take part in the court proceedings to help establish the truth and to take responsibility as a public institution.

There are more than 4,500 plaintiffs in the case. Jacques Servier, the billionaire founder of the drugmaker who was charged over the scandal by French authorities, died at the age of 92, five years ago.

Closely held Servier ranks as France’s second-largest drugmaker behind Sanofi. It makes generics under the brand Biogaran and researches new medicines in therapeutic areas such as Alzheimer’s disease and cancer. Servier acquired Shire Plc’s oncology business last year, gaining the rights to the leukemia medicine Oncaspar.

--With assistance from Marthe Fourcade.

To contact the reporter on this story: Gaspard Sebag in Paris at gsebag@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Anthony Aarons at aaarons@bloomberg.net, Peter Chapman, John Lauerman

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