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The Lawyer Top 20 Cases 2021 - NHS v Servier Laboratories

The Lawyer has released its much awaited Top 20 Cases of 2021, and we are pleased to see that the case of The Secretary of State for Health and the NHS Business Services Authority v Servier Laboratories, Servier Research and Development Limited, Les Laboratories Servier SAS and Servier SAS has made its way onto the shortlist.  The case appeared in The Lawyer's Top 20 Cases of 2019, however a series of interlocutory hearings has delayed proceedings and the substantive hearing is listed for 4 weeks starting in June 2021.  

For the English NHS claimants (The Secretary of State for Health and the NHS Business Services Authority), Serle Court’s David Drake (with Monckton Chambers’ Jon Turner QC and Philip Woolfe) is instructed by Peters & Peters partners Jonathan Tickner and Jason Woodland, and of counsel Emma Ruane.  David has been involved in the case ever since the claim was first issued in 2011.

The litigation concerns an action against Servier, an independent pharmaceutical company based in France, by the NHS alleging a breach of UK/EU competition law due to the supposed 'pay for delay' arrangement regarding its perindopril blood-pressure lowering medicines.

The Lawyer's Litigation Tracker says that Serle Court is a firm favourite of Peters & Peters when it comes to instructing counsel.

The Supreme Court handed down judgment on 6 November in Secretary of State for Health v Servier Laboratories Ltd [2020] UKSC 44 clarifying the scope of a principle of EU law, called “absolute res judicata” or “res judicata erga omnes”, under which a finding, made by an EU court in the course of annulling an act of an EU institution, can be given dispositive effect binding not simply on the parties to the decision, but on non-parties too.  To read David Drake's SerleShare in relation to the judgment, please click here.