It is not the first defeat, and for people who attribute their suffering to treatment with a drug they are always bitter. The 2nd Civil Chamber of the Rottweil Regional Court dismissed a man’s lawsuit against Biontech on Wednesday. A 58-year-old man claims vaccination damage. He attributes the vaccination with the Comirnaty vaccine to a “massive deterioration in vision in the right eye as a result of an eye infarction.” He demanded 150,000 euros in compensation from Biontech and demanded that he be compensated for all material and other non-material damage due to the health impairment.
This is not the first trial of its kind in Germany. And it is not the first decision by a court in this context. The Mainz-based company Biontech has so far rejected an amicable agreement. Most recently, in mid-November, the Düsseldorf regional court dismissed lawsuits against two vaccine manufacturers due to alleged damage caused by corona vaccinations as unfounded. Two women and a man from Kaarst, Meerbusch and Düsseldorf had filed a lawsuit against Biontech. They are demanding a total of almost half a million euros in compensation and more than 30,000 euros in material damages due to alleged permanent damage.
Side effects of the Covid-19 vaccines are known. This particularly affects local swelling and pain or allergic reactions and even anaphylactic shock. Myocarditis also occurred somewhat more frequently after vaccination, but was still very rare overall, with less than one case per 10,000 vaccinated in the slightly more at-risk group of young men. The same applied to thrombosis and very rare neurological diseases and paralysis. Given that more than 192 million vaccinations from various manufacturers against Covid-19 were administered in Germany, and around eleven billion worldwide, the number of reported suspected cases and confirmed side effects is extremely low.
The temporal connection between a vaccination and an illness does not yet prove causality. Over the course of the year, many people become ill again or their chronic illness relapses. If three quarters of the adult population have been injected with a vaccine one or more times, it is statistically to be expected that various cases of illness will occur in the days, weeks and months after vaccination, without this necessarily having anything to do with the vaccines.
In the most recent case, the Rottweil regional court did not investigate the question of whether the Biontech vaccine caused the eye attack, but rather saw the requirements for claims not being met.
The plaintiff would have had to prove that errors were made in the approval process or that new scientific findings led to a changed assessment of the benefit-risk ratio. He couldn’t do that. According to the court’s statement, the plaintiff relied on “unverified suspected reports of vaccine damage, individual opinions taken from the Internet, particularly on the spike protein, non-scientific opinions from doctors commissioned by the plaintiff or factually incorrect criticism of Paul’s safety reports -Ehrlich Institute”. The chamber also did not see any further explanation of the plaintiff’s alleged political influence on the admission decisions.
It is not the only procedure in Rottweil. According to a spokesman, two further lawsuits were heard on Monday and the verdicts will be announced in January and February 2024. A fourth lawsuit will be heard in January. The man can appeal against Wednesday’s verdict.
According to its own information, Biontech has received “an extremely small number of lawsuits due to potential vaccination side effects” to date. It is estimated that more than 1.5 billion people worldwide and more than 65 million people in Germany have been vaccinated with Comirnaty. In the cases known to Biontech, the health impairments presented were “individually and carefully examined” on the basis of all the information provided. The conclusion was reached that both the claims asserted in court and the lawsuits pending before various courts were unfounded. “Biontech would fulfill legitimate claims,” the company replied in writing to questions from the SZ. Biontech has not yet set aside any provisions to cover any claims for damages.