By Alex Stein
Yesterday, the European Court of Justice has issued an important ruling on vaccine manufacturers liability. N.W. et al. v. Sanofi Pasteur MSD, C‑621/15. This ruling triggered a hailstorm of criticism from different media outlets, including CNN. These outlets, however, have largely misreported the ruling and its underlying reasons, partly because of this misleading Press Release issued on behalf of the Court itself. In this post, I analyze the Court’s actual decision and briefly compare it with the American law.
The case at bar was about an adult patient who developed multiple sclerosis shortly after being vaccinated against Hepatitis B. The vaccination he received was manufactured by Sanofi Pasteur. Following the patient’s death from multiple sclerosis, his family filed a products liability suit against the company. The suit was filed in a French court, whose decision on evidentiary matters triggered a series of appeals that brought the case before the European Court of Justice. The Court was asked to determine whether the French evidentiary rule which allows plaintiffs to prove the vaccine’s defect and causation by “serious, specific and consistent evidence” in the absence of medical research in either direction aligns with the European law of products liability. The Court ruled that it does while making a number of clarifications and setting up conditions for such rules being valid under Article 4 of the European Council Directive 85/374/EEC of 25 July 1985. Read More