400 Swedish women win compensation over faulty French breast implants

NANTERRE, France - A French court on Thursday (Nov 29) ordered the German safety certifier that approved defective breast implants for use to compensate around 400 Swedish women who received the devices behind a global health scare.

The court in the Paris suburb of Nanterre ordered TUV to pay €4,600 (S$7,180) to each of the Swedish plaintiffs for the harm caused by approving implants made by French firm Poly Implant Prothese (PIP).

It also ordered the company to reimburse the cost of having the implants - which were filled with a cheap industrial-grade silicone gel used in electronic equipment - removed.

It comes a month after France's highest appeals court ordered that TUV be retried for negligence over its role in the affair, after being initially cleared of liability by a lower court.

After a separate trial, the company had been ordered to pay €60 million as a deposit for potential compensation for 20,000 women who received the defective implants.

The PIP implant scandal made global headlines in 2011, after doctors first noticed abnormally high rupture rates in the implants.

Some 400,000 people worldwide, most in Latin America, are believed to have received the enhancements.

Thousands had them removed, despite health authorities in several countries declaring them not to be toxic.

PIP's founder, Jean-Claude Mas, was convicted of fraud and sentenced to four years in jail. His company was shut down in 2010.