Product Liability

Abstract

Although itself a response to the thalidomide tragedy, the UK scheme of regulation for medicinal products contained in the Medicines Act 1968 does not address questions of liability for injury suffered as the result of defective medicinal products. Rather, these issues are left to be dealt with by the common law of negligence, supplemented by statutes such as the Vaccine Damages Payments Act 1979 and the Congenital Disabilities (Civil Liability) Act 1976 and in particular by the Consumer Protection Act 1987. The influence of pharmaceutical products in particular on general issues of negligence liability is a strong one. The thalidomide injuries were responsible for a questioning of the foundations of the law of negligence: the principle that liability at law depends on fault. Since thalidomide, many other medicinal products, such as Opren, pertussis vaccine and, more recently, Myodil (which the plaintiffs allege causes the spinal disease arachnoiditis) and the benzodiazepines (which the plaintiffs claim was prescribed with inadequate regard to the risk of dependency), have generated litigation in the UK. As pharmaceutical products must be potentially dangerous if they are to be effective, complex questions concerning the balance between safety and the benefits conferred by the product frequently arise. With the advent of multi-party litigation, the procedural issues surrounding these questions are starting to become as complex as the substantive ones.