PARIS – A Paris court will deliver its verdict Monday in a case that grew into one of France’s biggest modern health scandals, ruling whether a French pharmaceutical company is guilty of manslaughter and other charges for selling a diabetes drug blamed for hundreds of deaths.
Accused of favoring profits over patients’ lives, Servier Laboratories is facing millions of euros in potential fines and damages after a huge trial involving 6,500 plaintiffs.
They allege that the company allowed the drug, called Mediator, to be widely and irresponsibly prescribed as a diet pill — with deadly consequences.
Servier says it didn’t know about the drug’s risks. The exceptional trial ran from September 2019 to July 2020, with a two-month hiatus caused by