Newly unearthed documents provide additional evidence for a series of lawsuits alleging that a number of major pharmaceutical companies widely distributed the dangerous birth-defect causing drug Thalidomide in the United States.

The new lawsuit, filed Aug. 9, 2012, in the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas, on behalf of 11 new alleged Thalidomide victims, is the latest in a series of suits filed against pharmaceutical giants GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi-Aventis and Grunenthal GMBH.

The suits claim that the companies or their predecessors participated in so-called “clinical trials” of Thalidomide in the United States during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Invented by one of the defendants in the cases, Grunenthal, Thalidomide caused thousands of infant deaths and extreme, disfiguring birth defects throughout Europe when used by women during pregnancy.

The latest lawsuit includes a number of new sources to substantiate the allegations. Investigators have unearthed and translated the indictment of Grunenthal executives in a German court, as well as new FDA documents that speak to the scale of the drug’s distribution in the United States.

More information can be found here.