The federal supreme court in Germany rejected a woman’s claim for compensation from certification agency TÜV Rheinland, which approved faulty breast implants produced by Poly Implant Prothèse until it closed in 2010.
PIP sold implants for almost 20 years until investigators found out it was posing a low-grade industrial silicone as a pricier medical product. The counterfeit substance was used in implants that were given to 300,000 women and thousands of them ruptured.
The plaintiff, who was appealing to the supreme court after a lower court denied her complaint, had implants fitted in 2008 and subsequently removed in 2012. She argued that TÜV Rheinland failed to meet its responsibilities as a certification agency and she claimed $44,588 in compensation.
The plaintiff argued that inspections, examination of documents and product tests would have stopped the supply of the implants. But the court said that European regulations did not hold the agency responsible to “carry out unannounced inspections, to examine products and/or to check the manufacturer’s business documents.”
“On this basis, the applicant’s appeal has not been successful,” the court said in a statement, according to Reuters.
A France-based appeals court ordered TÜV Rheinland to pay 60 million euros to 20,000 women with the faulty breast implants last month.
Material from Reuters was used in this report.
