Montpellier lawyer Catherine Szwarc has been attending the sprawling for nine months Mediator’s criminal trial, before the Paris Criminal Court. Special hearings were interrupted for two months, health crisis in covid-19 coronavirus obliges.
Me Catherine Szwarc who lived the confinement in music on her property of Palavas-les-Flots, thanks to her daughter Alix, talented violinist and pianist, resumed the path of the courthouse of the capital for the time of the pleadings of the parties civilians.
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Victims in Hérault and Gard
This is the big day, this Tuesday: indeed, with Me Claude Lienhard of the Strasbourg bar, she will speak for all the victims of the Picks, including those of the Hérault and Gard.
It is she who will open the pleadings of the civil parties. She will defend the interests of Montpellier residents and hundreds of other victims of Lunel, Mauguio-Carnon, Palavas-les-Flots, Guzargues, Prades-le-Lez, Castries, Castelnau-le-Lez, Baillargues, Sauve, Boisseron, Nimes, Saint-Laurent-d´Aigouze, Saint-Gilles-du-Gard, Souvignargues, but also from Perpignan, Marseille, Nice, Toulon, Strasbourg, Paris and Bagnères-de-Bigorre.
“I will carry their voice tomorrow, I will speak for the living, but also for those who are no more. Some will be there in court, others will be there too, in my heart, in my words, ”testifies the Montpellier black dress.
Unconventional trials
This is an extraordinary trial which has lasted since last September: 3,000 civil parties, 25 defendants, including eleven legal persons representing various entities linked to the Servier laboratory, 375 lawyers, 6 months of hearing, a big implication for all the lawyers, especially those civil parties. Defendants are tried for alleged crimes of aggravated deception, homicide and involuntary injury.
The Mediator, diabetes medicine sold as an appetite suppressant, was marketed by the Servier laboratory from 1976 to 2009. It was consumed by 5 million people. Possibly causing serious heart damage, it is said to have caused the death of 500 to 2,000 people, according to the investigation.
Read also: Mediator trial: whistleblower Irène Frachon denounces “an industrial crime”
How the scandal broke
Authorized on the French market for diabetics and people suffering from high cholesterol, the Mediator® would have been diverted from this use and prescribed to other patients (non diabetic) as an appetite suppressant to help them lose weight. However, benfluorex causes the production of norfenfluramine in the body, an appetite suppressant (hence its effects on weight loss) which is one of the amphetamines.
A substance found in two others medication Servier laboratories: Isoméride® and Pondéral®. Appetite suppressants removed from sale in 1997 because they had serious side effects (pulmonary arterial hypertension responsible for heart failure). These serious health effects were demonstrated in a study conducted in 1995 by Pr Abenhaim, with the team of pulmonologists at Béclère Hospital (Clamart).
Thirty years after its commercialization, the Mediator® is therefore also suspected of increasing the risk of heart valve disease.
- In 1999, it is withdrawn from the market in Italy because of its health risk. The French National Authority for Health (HAS) is against the reimbursement of the Picks, judging that it is of no medical interest.
- In 2003, it is withdrawn from the Spanish market.
- In 2007, the French Agency for the Safety of Health Products (Afssaps, now ANSM) recommends that it no longer be prescribed as an appetite suppressant.
- In 2007, Irène Frachon, pulmonologist at the Brest teaching hospital, warns of the dangers of the Mediator after having investigated its cardiac effects for 10 years. She reports cases of heart valve disease to the Medicines Agency. Two years later she will publish the successful book ” Mediator 150g, how many dead?“.
- November 30, 2009, the Mediator and its generics are withdrawn from sale in France by Afssaps. The truth comes out in the press and the matter turns into a health scandal. Xavier Bertrand, Minister of Health at the time, wants all patients who have been treated with the Picks to consult their doctor. In total, 5 million people used the Mediator® in France between 1976 and November 2009.
Read also: Montpellier: the alleged murderer of the father stabbed in the Mosson arrested
Judgment in a year
After the pleadings at the hearing of the correctional court in Paris, place to the requisitions of the prosecutors, before the word with the defense: the judgment will be delivered next year.
The offices of Me Catherine Szwarc, in Montpellier and MeClaude Lienhard in Strasbourg are waging other legal battles in defense of the victims of collective accidents which have had enormous media and judicial repercussions. These two lawyers appear as civil parties in the long and complex procedures of the Rosny-sous-Bois explosion (2014), the Paris attacks (November 13, 2015) and the Nice attack, July 14, 2016.
In her Montpellier office, Catherine Szwarc sometimes swallows a few medications to avoid overwork.
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