ROME - Italy's plastic surgeons association on Wednesday sued the French company that made substandard breast implants and the German certification company that checked its products for fraud and said its members would consider themselves injured parties.
The association said its lawyers had filed the suit in a Rome court against the now defunct company Poly Implant Prothese (PIP) and Germany's TUV Rheinland.
"Surgeons who used the incriminating implants were as much the objects of fraud as were the patients," the association's vice president, Mario Pelle Ceravolo, said.
He said the surgeons had been "tricked" by a product that had the European Union's mark of approval and had all the physical characteristics of a bonafide product.
