When Does The Clock Start? Key Takeaways From The CJEU’s Recent Sanofi Pasteur Judgment

Less than a year before the transposition of the revised Product Lability Directive¹, the Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU”) has provided some welcome clarification on the application of the limitation periods for claims made pursuant to the Product Liability Directive (PLD)². In the case of LF v Sanofi Pasteur³, the CJEU considered three important questions addressing (i) the coexistence of fault-based liability with liability under the PLD; (ii) the validity of the ten-year long-stop period and its compatibility with Article 47 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU (“the Charter”); and (iii) the date from which the time runs in the three-year limitation period for bringing such claim under Article 10 PLD.