Last September Emma-Louise Lucas, a mother of one from Manchester, at just 31 received the shocking news that she had a rare type of cancer, caused by her breast implants.
Called breast-implant associated anaplastic large-cell lymphoma (BIA-ALCL), it’s a form of Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, which affects immune cells.
The disease has been linked to implants manufactured by Allergan. While the US medical company has made no admission of liability, in 2019 it issued a voluntary global recall of these types of implants.
Now Emma, a manager of a civil-engineering company, is facing not just a shocking diagnosis, but learning she is the latest victim of a vast legal injustice.
Emma had her implants inserted in March 2014. That time gap, of just over a decade, means that under UK rules she is barred from taking a legal case against the makers.
This is because there is a ten-year limit on making medical-device injury claims, even though it often takes more than ten years for patients to start suffering symptoms of harm.
It is a different situation in Europe, where the legal limit for such claims is being raised to 25 years.
This unfairness is highlighted by the fact that last August, in a landmark case, 140 women in the UK won an undisclosed sum from three companies, Johnson & Johnson, Boston Scientific and Bard after suffering years of misery caused by mesh, or transvaginal tape (TVT).
The total sum is expected to run into millions of pounds. But thanks to the ten-year legal snare, thousands of other UK women such as Gail McCourt, who have the exact same type of injuries caused by the same mesh, aren’t allowed to pursue the same claims.
In a similar scenario, hundreds of British women are now pursuing compensation for harm they say was caused by a contraceptive implant called Essure.
Source: The Daily Mail, 11 February 2025
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