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Court holds state responsible for public servant's death

The Kofu District Court on September 27 ordered the government to pay 71.8 million yen to parents of a public employee who committed suicide due to excessive work, supporting their claim that the government is responsible for his death.

The parents were demanding that the state pay 120 million yen in compensation for its failure to fulfill its responsibility to take care of public employees' health and safety.

Yokomori Shinji, a 23-year-old Social Insurance Agency employee, killed himself in 1997. The National Personnel Authority in December 2002 certified his death as caused by an accident at work. It recognized that his suicide was caused by excessively heavy workloads and that he worked about 50 hours of overtime the week before he died.

The court said that Yokomori's superiors must have been aware that his excessive workload would have a negative influence on his health and that they could have taken measures to prevent his death, such as recommending to him to take some time off.

The plaintiffs and their lawyers said at a press conference that it is the first ruling that ordered the government to compensate for the death of a public employee after the case was certified as death from overwork. -- Akahata, September 28, 2005