‘No error’ over faulty breast implants: court

A French appeals court on Thursday found German safety standards body TUV had "fulfilled its obligations" in certifying breast implants that were found to be faulty and sparked a worldwide scare.

Published: 2 July 2015 10:48 CEST

'No error' over faulty breast implants: court

Lawyer Laurent Gaudon (R) and his clients who received the faulty implants at the start of the trial in 2013. Photo: Gerard Julien/AFP

The ruling overturns a decision by a lower French court in 2013 which had found the body liable and ordered the company to pay millions of euros in compensation to distributors and victims.

TUV certified that implants made by French firm Poly Implant Prothese (PIP) conformed to safety rules — even though they were subsequently found to contain substandard, industrial-grade silicone gel.

The body has maintained it was never its job to check the actual implants, and their task was only to inspect the manufacturing process.

The appeals court in the southern city of Toulon found that TUV and its French subsidiary had “fulfilled the obligations incumbent upon them as a certifying body (and) committed no error engaging their criminal responsiblity.”

The scandal first emerged in 2010 after doctors noticed abnormally high rupture rates in PIP implants and gathered steam worldwide in 2011, with some 300,000 women in 65 countries believed to have received the faulty implants.

Six distributors of the implants from Bulgaria, Brazil, Italy, Syria, Mexico and Romania and nearly 1,700 women — most of them from South America but also from France and Britain — sued TUV.

The lower French court ordered the German body to compensate the women €3,000 ($3,300) each while waiting for individual medical or financial assessments to be conducted on each plaintiff and TUV paid out a total of €5.8 million.

“They will technically have to pay back this money but no decision has been taken on a request for reimbursement,” said a source close to the safety body.

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The French Jewish community, the third largest in the world, has for months been on edge in the face of a growing number of attacks and desecrations of memorials.

“National police in Rouen neutralised early this morning an armed individual who clearly wanted to set fire to the city’s synagogue,” Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Police responded at 6.45 am to reports of “fire near the synagogue”, a police source said.

A source close to the case told AFP the man “was armed with a knife and an iron bar, he approached police, who fired. The individual died”.

“It is not only the Jewish community that is affected. It is the entire city of Rouen that is bruised and in shock,” Rouen Mayor Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol wrote on X.

He made clear there were no other victims other than the attacker.

Two separate investigations have been opened, one into the fire at the synagogue and another into the circumstances of the death of the individual killed by the police, Rouen prosecutors said.

Such an investigation by France’s police inspectorate general is automatic whenever an individual is killed by the police.

The man threatened a police officer with a knife and the latter used his service weapon, said the Rouen prosecutor.

The dead man was not immediately identified, a police source said.

Asked by AFP, the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office said that it is currently assessing whether it will take up the case.

France has the largest Jewish community of any country after Israel and the United States, as well as Europe’s largest Muslim community.

There have been tensions in France in the wake of the October 7th attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israel, followed by the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip.

Red hand graffiti was painted onto France’s Holocaust Memorial earlier this week, prompted anger including from President Emmanuel Macron who condemned “odious anti-Semitism”.

“Attempting to burn a synagogue is an attempt to intimidate all Jews. Once again, there is an attempt to impose a climate of terror on the Jews of our country. Combating anti-Semitism means defending the Republic,” Yonathan Arfi, the president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF). wrote on X.

France was hit from 2015 by a spate of Islamist attacks that also hit Jewish targets. There have been isolated attacks in recent months and France’s security alert remains at its highest level.