Japan Press Weekly

Tweet

2020 March 11 - 17 [SOCIAL ISSUES]

High court orders TEPCO to compensate evacuees for loss of hometowns

The Sendai High Court on March 12 ordered Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) to pay a total of 730 million yen in compensation to former townspeople who had been ordered to evacuate their homes following the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear meltdown accident nine years ago.

They are 216 residents of the coastal towns of Naraha, Namie, Okuma, Futaba, and Tomioka in Fukushima Prefecture, fighting in court to seek 1.9 billion yen in damages.

The ruling increased the amount of the total compensation by 150 million yen, including that for the loss of their hometowns, from what a lower court had decided, and denounced TEPCO's longtime negligence in doing tsunami-resistant work.

The plaintiffs and their lawyers issued a joint statement after the ruling, stating that "TEPCO should accept the judgement with sincerity, not appeal the case to the Supreme Court, and choose a negotiated settlement." The statement emphasizes, "It will no longer be acceptable for TEPCO to prolong the plaintiffs' agony by putting off the redress for the victims."

Hirota Tsuguo, a co-head of the plaintiffs' counsel, said, "More than 140,000 people had to evacuate their homes and only less than 10% of them filed lawsuits. I'd like to make further efforts so that this court decision can spread out horizontally among all evacuees."