The Spanish Association of Thalidomide Victims (AVITE) announced this Friday that it has initiated the submission of claims for compensation and lifetime pensions to the German state thalidomide foundation (Conterganstiftung) on behalf of its members.
AVITE has announced that, based on the German state foundation's response, it will decide whether to initiate legal proceedings against the institution, including before German courts.
All this is in light of the recent ruling by the German Supreme Court, which overturned the negative medical examinations the foundation had been issuing for decades. Now, with this ruling, AVITE asserts that it has been "demonstrated and confirmed," by a court ruling, that it did so in a "partisan, deliberate, and always benefiting the German laboratory Grünenthal."
To pursue all these legal actions, AVITE has hired the very German law firm that obtained this ruling. For now, AVITE has provided the foundation with "devastating" medical documentation demonstrating that its members' congenital deformities are attributable to thalidomide from the German pharmaceutical company Grünenthal.
Among these documents, AVITE has submitted a medical report for each member of the association, certifying that they are affected by thalidomide, signed by the co-discoverer of its harmful effects, Dr. Claus Knapp.
"The German government's state foundation has been requested, through a prior claim, to receive the corresponding compensation and lifetime pensions to which they are entitled and which, for decades, have always been denied to Spanish thalidomide victims because Grünenthal is the manufacturing laboratory and the German state is the birthplace of thalidomide," AVITE concludes.
