An E.Leclerc center, in Landerneau, in 2013. – Credit JEAN-SEBASTIEN EVRARD / AFP
The Union of pharmacist groups (UDGPO) announced on Saturday the launch of a collective legal action against the E.Leclerc centers for “false advertising”, after having already obtained in December the conviction of the
distributor.
“We won in December as a union, and now we believe that all pharmacists have the right to report moral and economic damage on their own account,” Laurent Filoche told Agence France-Presse (AFP), President of the UDGPO. He hopes that the nearly 2,000 pharmacies located near a Leclerc center or a distributor’s drugstore will join during the month of March in this “great collective action (…) to repair the moral and economic damage of French pharmacies “.
A pharmacy doctor present in “each of his parapharmacy”
In its judgment dated December 3, the Commercial Court of Créteil considered that the communication made by the distributor on the presence in “each of his parapharmacies” of a pharmacy doctor was “misleading” under the Code of the consumption, and ordered him to pay 30,000 euros to the UDGPO for damages. According to the Commercial Court, the Leclerc centers, which appealed, were not “able to prove the effective presence of doctors of pharmacy and their availability for the delivery of advice to customers”, which was however promised by the teaches in an advertisement.
The distributor, through the voice of its manager Michel-Edouard Leclerc, has been a fervent activist since the 1980s for the opening of the market for the sale of pharmacy products without prescription. Since 1989, he has opened 245 drugstores under his brand, which offer more than 6,000 references.
–
