Australian wins key thalidomide settlement

An Australian woman born without arms and legs after her mother took thalidomide during pregnancy won a landmark multi-million dollar settlement on Wednesday in her class action against drug firms.

Lynette Rowe, 50, is leading a mass lawsuit on behalf of people born in Australia and New Zealand with congenital defects between 1958-1970 whose mothers took the sedative thalidomide, made by German chemical firm Grunenthal.

Rowe claims her condition was caused by her mother’s consumption of thalidomide and is suing Grunenthal, defunct British-based distributor The Distillers Company and Diageo, which took control of Distillers in 1997.

Lawyers told the Supreme Court in Victoria state that Rowe had reached a confidential settlement in her case with Diageo today, describing it as a ‘multi-million dollar amount’.

‘(It) will be sufficient to provide a very good level of care for Lyn for the rest of her life,’ said Rowe’s counsel, Peter Gordon.

Gordon said it was a ‘fair and consistent’ result which showed compassion and understanding for Rowe, who has been cared for by her parents around the clock since she was born.

Diageo had also agreed to negotiate with other claimants in the case, in which Gordon’s firm said it had been contacted by ‘over 100 people’, including two claims that were now ‘well advanced’.

The case against Grunenthal will continue, but Rowe’s lawyers plan to ask for the hearing, slated for October, to be pushed back to August 2013 to allow for settlement negotiations and for any final claimants to come forward. Rowe’s team claims that Grunenthal saw Australia as a priority market for thalidomide and ‘flooded’ it with the morning sickness drug, with eight million tablets on the shelves when investigators finally linked it to birth injuries.