Contergan trial ends

Joint plaintiff attorney Dr. Karl-Hermann Schulte-Hillen (l-r), a journalist, Hubert Linn, chairman of the Federation of the Phisically Disabled, and attorney Dr. Rupert Schreiber after the Contergan trial ended without a verdict on 18 December 1970. The Contergan trial, which had begun on 27 May 1968 in Alsdorf near Aachen, Germany, was with 283 trial days until then the most extensive criminal trial in the law history of the Federal Republik of Germany. The Aachen district attorney's office had filed official charges on 14 March 1967 against nine employees of pharmaceutical company Gr¾nenthal, maker of the Contergan drug. Preliminary investigations had begun on 1 December 1961 after the active component thalidomide, which had been on sale under the name Contergan since 1957, had been pointed out to be the cause of deformities in newborns and neurological damages in adults at a medical conference in D¾sseldorf, Germany. The trial began on 27 May 1968 in Alsdorf near Aachen, Germany, and ended without a verdict on 18 December 1970. The Gr¾nenthal company agreed voluntarily to a payment of 114 million Deutschmarks compensation to the victims.