The first lesson from this judgment is the surprising report that Nobel Biocare, rather than admit that the company which it had taken over, had marketed a defective product and made amends to the injured parties, the practitioners ,preferred to contest the truth of these  facts and called the practitioners into question, taking the risk of being penalized.

 Which is what happened.
 In its reasons for the judgment, the court, which convicted Nobel Biocare, after considering the duties of the company Steri-Oss, to compensate practitioners who had inserted the notorious implants, in accordance with the rules of dental practice, restated the experts conclusions declaring that the contentious implants  did not offer the buyers, in particular, practitioners, the safety which they could legitimately expect.

The judgment also reported the lack of animal testing, since the manufacturer had simply made use of those tests carried out by another company,the Calcitek company, which were carried out on dogs before 1991 for not longer than ten months and as a result were not of a kind to enable the entire performance of the implant to be evaluated over time.

The court also reported that the company Steri-Oss, to which the company Nobel Biocare stood in for ,had not been able to justify the reasons why it had not continued with testing to ensure that  it put on sale a product as described above.

 Finally it was recognized that the practitioners  could not be blamed after having bought the new-generation implants from a  well-known company that presented its product as having exceptional properties.

link to jugement of TGI (in English)

link to jugement of TGI (in french)

The second lesson of this judgment is the way in which Nobel Biocare  behaved  in relation to the courts and different participants in the proceedings , which  lasted for twelve years in the end, including  procrastinating manoevres, (a wait of three years for Nobel Biocare to communicate animal tests as part of the expert legal appraisal many procedures to slow down the expert legal appraisal which have lasted six years) calling into question the fairness and competence of the expert, specious objections on the merits of the proceedings and alleged collusion between the complainants and judges.

Besides, in the terms of the  judgment delivered on 6 January 2005 ,the Court de Cassation, (Final Court of Appeal) judged that the Court of Appeal in Paris had rightly rejected the application lodged by Nobel Biocare aiming to obtain a replacement of the expert legal appraisal, on the grounds that there was no reason to doubt his good faith and impartiality. The judgment of the Court de Cassation is final. 
Although Steri-Oss was at fault in putting implants on the market that had not been sufficiently tested and the lifespan of these implants could not be guaranteed while this occurred before Nobel Biocare acquired the company, the irresponsibility with which Nobel Biocare behaved during the proceedings is nevertheless shocking.

By preferring an all-out attack rather than admitting the fault of a company acquired at a later date, Nobel Biocare has , once again, shown a particularly questionable arrogance in relation to all those who consider dental implantology as a serious science which respects patients. 

It should be emphasized that, to date, this judgment is likely to be the subject of an appeals procedure .