"Grenfell cladding manufacturer declines to release documents", 19 November 2019

...Arconic is declining to release documents about flammable cladding used on the Grenfell tower to a US court hearing a lawsuit from survivors and victims’ families, citing a French law limiting disclosure in foreign courts, which it has also invoked in the UK public inquiry...

..The US company argued...that its subsidiary in France, where the cladding panels were made and sold, fell under the statute and so documents from there could not be produced to that US court...

...Arconic and two other companies face a wrongful-death lawsuit in Pennsylvania from survivors and the estates of many of those killed.

The company told the court this month, “Because AAP SAS [Arconic’s French subsidiary, Arconic Architectural Products SAS] is a French company, many if not most of the AAP SAS documents in the database are subject to the French blocking statute.”...

...Lawyers for the 247 plaintiffs in the case...have pushed back. “Plaintiffs disagree that the French blocking statute hinders Arconic’s ability and obligation to produce the responsive documents that exist in US databases in any way,” they said in court documents.