On 27 January we hosted the second part of our webinar series The Power of Law.
This second part was dedicated to presenting our recently published Guidelines for Legal Procedures by NGOs, which we illustrated with examples from practice.
Missed the webinar or want to listed back a part of the interesting discussions we had?
The webinar recording can be found here.
Please COunt on us for future legal action. we need to work together to build litigation theories
Peter Maybarduk, Public Citizen
Speakers presentations (and link to slides):
- Wilbert Bannenberg from PAF on the competition law case against Leadiant for it’s CDCA. Presentation found here.
- Patrick Durisch from Public Eye on patent opposition against Novartis’ Kymriah treatment. Presentation found here.
- Peter Maybarduk from Public Citizen on health right litigation cases. Presentation found here.
- James Love from Knowledge Ecology International (KEI) on examples of using the Freedom of Information Act (and other examples ;)). James did not use a presentation.
As an inspirational break and to learn from other successful movements, we played a video on Friends of the Earth Netherlands (Milieudefensie) winning the climate case against Shell.
Links and comments shared through chat:
- Patrick: In this CL model request for cancer drug pertuzumab prepared for Swiss authorities to submit to the patent court (2019), we used both competition law (excessive pricing) & patent law arguments.
- Peter Maybarduk: Public Citizen also uses Freedom of Information (FOIA) requests, and then when consumer groups are turned down — as we often are, for example the govt will cite a national security exemption, far too broadly — then we litigate in the courts, to compel the govt to disclose documents under FOIA. (When we think we have a winning theory.) It’s a powerful but limited tool.
- Peter Maybarduk: As the guidelines say, we begin by asking the company to act, then the govt through administrative requests – legal requests to the administrative state. When the government agencies refuse to act, we can go to the courts to compel action. For example,to defend the right to health. However, a challenge to this approach is that states aren’t usually obligated to spend money. And how do we think about the right to health? Is it indiivudal – in which cases, companies can fix a problem pretty easily, and avoid accountability, or is it collective?
- And, Wilbert shared PAFs case of interest: AbbVie’s pricing strategy on Humira.