French firm found guilty in deadly diet pill scandal

PARIS — A French pharmaceutical company Monday was ordered to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in damages and fines for its role in one of the nation’s biggest modern health scandals, with a Paris court finding the firm guilty of manslaughter and other charges for selling a diabetes drug blamed for hundreds of deaths.

The ruling capped a judicial marathon targeting Servier Laboratories and involving more than 6,500 plaintiffs. The Paris tribunal took nearly three hours to read its verdict totaling 1,988 pages.

The trial was spread over 10 months in 2019 and 2020, and nearly 400 lawyers worked on the case. The Paris tribunal was also connected by video link Monday to a courthouse in Montpellier, southern France, so dozens of plaintiffs there could also see the delivery of the verdict.

The French case centered on the diabetes drug Mediator.

Servier was accused of putting profits ahead of patients’ welfare by allowing the drug to be widely and irresponsibly prescribed as a diet pill — with deadly consequences. Servier argued that it didn’t know about the drug’s dangers.

The court found Servier guilty of manslaughter, involuntary wounding and aggravated deception. The judges’ ruling said the firm hid the drug’s hunger-suppressant side effects from medical regulators. The court acquitted Servier of fraud.

Also found guilty and fined for manslaughter and unintentional injury was the French medicines agency, now reformed and renamed. It was accused of failing to take adequate measures to protect patients and of being too close to Servier.

Judges handed Servier a fine of nearly $3.2 million and ordered it to pay hundreds of millions more in damages to be shared out among plaintiffs. Damages for aggravated deception alone totaled nearly $188 million. And other hefty payments were awarded for the manslaughter and wounding charges.

The court also handed a suspended four-year prison sentence and fines to the only surviving Servier executive accused of involvement, Dr. JeanPhilippe Seta.

A 2010 study said Mediator was suspected in up to 2,000 deaths, with doctors linking it to heart and lung problems, in the 33 years that it was on the market.