Nicolas Vaux-Montagny

In this May 21, 2013 file photo, Jacques Servier, founder of Servier Laboratories, sits during the opening of the trial of the so-called Mediator case, a drug linked to hundreds of deaths, at Nanterre's court house, outside Paris. A massive trial with more than 4,000 plaintiffs is opening for French pharmaceutical giant Servier Laboratoires and France's medicines watchdog, accused of involuntary manslaughter, fraud and other charges in a scandal over a diabetes medication suspected of causing hundreds of deaths.

Major Trial Opens Over Diet-Pills

Although designed as a diabetes drug, Mediator was widely prescribed as a hunger suppressant to millions of people before sales were suspended in France in 2009.