SPAIN Law and Practice Contributed by: Xavier Moliner and Juan Martínez, Faus Moliner
The Supreme Court pointed out that a manufac - turer may be held liable under the product liabil - ity regime of RLD 1/2007 not only for damages caused by products infringing safety and qual - ity regulations but also for damages caused by products that, despite having undergone safety and quality controls, remain “unsafe” . The rel - evant time to determine whether a product is unsafe/defective is the time when the product is put into circulation. According to the Supreme Court, although the voluntary withdrawal of a product from the market does not necessarily mean that the product was defective at the time it was put into circulation, it may indeed consti - tute an indication that at that time the product did not comply with the safety standards that may reasonably be expected from it. In the court proceeding, the manufacturer alleged that the prosthesis only had minor failures and that, in the majority of cases, it worked well in and accordance with its purpose. Furthermore, the manufacturer alleged that there was no proof that the damages were caused by the prosthesis itself and that the withdrawal of the product from the market had been entirely voluntary. The Supreme Court did not accept these claims and considered that the fact that the prosthe - sis had an unexpectedly high rate of revisions must prevail. As per the Court, this high rate of revisions, which was neither identified nor disclosed by the manufacturer at the time the product was put into circulation (and, therefore, was not known by the medical community and the relevant notified bodies at that time), shows that the risks posed by the prosthesis were higher than expected. In these circumstances, the Supreme Court concluded that it falls on the manufacturer to prove why it was not possible to identify and disclose the true risks of the device (that ultimately caused the need to withdraw the
product from the market) at the time the product was put into circulation. The Judgment of 24 January 2022 In this judgment, the Supreme Court confirmed the doctrine set forth in the Judgment of 20 July 2020 regarding liability for damages in corporate groups. The Supreme Court began by recalling that the general rule in Spain is to respect the concept of the separate legal personality of companies, meaning that: • each company is only liable for the fulfilment of the obligations it assumed and those aris - ing from its own actions; and • belonging to a corporate group does not entail that a company may be held liable for acts carried out by other group companies. Although the doctrine of veil piercing allows the plaintiff to sue a company other than that which performed the acts leading to the alleged damage, this is only possible on an exceptional basis. In order to apply such veil piercing, the plaintiff must prove that the company liable for the acts leading to the alleged damage was used abusively by another group company for the very purpose of impeding future claims. In these cases, the other group company may indeed be sued. In the remaining cases, suing a group company other than the one that performed the acts leading to the alleged damage will pose serious difficulties to the claimants. The Supreme Court further stated that partially coinciding names between companies belong - ing to a corporate group is not a sufficient reason to sue a company for the acts carried out by another company of the same group.
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