Mediator Compensation Fund: lawyers advocating civil proceedings

Written by Sandeep Nehra

Several law firms defending the Mediator of the alleged victims say the fund created by the state will not guarantee compensation for their clients, they advocate to focus on civil suits for redress.

“We will make the choice of court proceedings for victims we represent,” said Thursday the AFP Me Claude Lienhard, one of a group of lawyers assisting the Association for Defending Victims of Mediator and the ‘Isomeride (Avimediator) and about 250 victims of the product.

“The compensation fund for victims of the Mediator is not actually a fund designed to compensate the entirety of all the damage of all victims,” ??say the group of six lawyers in a statement.

Managed by the National Compensation Medical (ONIAM), this fund will enable the persons who took the drug laboratories Servier to file, in September, their application for compensation. It provides that compensation is provided by Servier.

On its website, the ONIAM specifies to “submit or have submitted a functional deficit temporary or permanent, total or partial” because of the consumption of the Mediator, to claim compensation.

For me Lienhard, this fund does not allow “full compensation” yet announced by the Department of Health.

“The functional deficit excludes the loss of fear and anxiety, psychological damage,” said the lawyer.

“Not sure that the fund covers the loss of the indirect victim,” he added, referring to the damage suffered by “the person who lives with a victim of the Mediator and whose lives can be ruined by the degradation of the state health of the latter. ”

Marketed in France by Servier 1976 to November 2009, the Mediator has been used by five million people and taken off the market because of heart risks faced by patients.

This antidiabetic, widely prescribed as an appetite suppressant, causing 500 to 2000 deaths, according to several studies.

The collective also shows suspicious of an “administrative treatment” by the ONIAM does not offer any real expertise in his contradictory. He also fears a trend towards flat-rate compensation. “The system of compensation of the scale ONIAM is less than what can be achieved before the judge,” said Ms. Lienhard.