PARENT DRUG COMPANIES CANNOT AVOID THE SINS OF SUBSIDIARIES – ECJ
December 1st, 2009
BY KEITH NUTHALL
CONSUMERS suing pharmaceutical companies can change the formal identity of a defendant in court proceedings after a standard 10-year limit for making such claims, if their old target is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the new. This was the conclusion of a European Court of Justice (ECJ) case involving France's Aventis Pasteur SA - sued by a British patient over alleged brain damage from a vaccine. He initially sought damages against UK subsidiary Mérieux UK Ltd, (now Aventis Pasteur MSD) - later he asked this company be substituted in proceedings ...
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