Tokyo, 23 March, /AJMEDIA/
A Japanese district court rejected Friday compensation claims by 144 unrecognized sufferers of the Minamata mercury-poisoning disease against the state and others.
The Kumamoto District Court recognized 25 of the plaintiffs, who have not been eligible for relief payments under a special law, as victims of the disease, but did not award them compensation, citing the expiry of a 20-year statute of limitations for their damages claims.
The ruling contrasted with a judgment by a different court in a similar case that ordered payments to the plaintiffs after acknowledging them all as victims.
The neurological disease, formally acknowledged by local health authorities since 1956, has been traced to mercury-tainted water dumped into an inland sea by a Chisso Corp chemical plant in Minamata, Kumamoto prefecture in southwestern Japan.
The plaintiffs, who said they developed sensory disorders after eating fish from the sea, claimed damages from the state, Kumamoto Prefecture and Chisso.
They argued it was unjust they were not covered by the 2009 special measures law because of their age and residential records.
The law restricts the eligibility in principle to those born before 1969 — a year after the government recognized Minamata disease as caused by industrial pollution and stopped water discharges — and residents of nine designated areas in Kumamoto and neighboring Kagoshima prefectures. It pays recognized victims a lump sum of 2.1 million yen.
Application for the relief measures closed in July 2012, around two years after the special law took effect, raising concerns that many might have missed the deadline.
The defendants argued that the plaintiffs had not received mercury exposure significant enough to cause Minamata disease and that their symptoms could have been caused by something other than the condition. They also noted the elapsing of the statute of limitations.
Friday’s ruling marked the second among similar lawsuits filed at Tokyo, Osaka, Kumamoto and Niigata district courts by a total of over 1,700 plaintiffs.
The first ruling, handed down by the Osaka District Court in September 2023, had ordered the state, Kumamoto Prefecture and Chisso to pay a total of 352 million yen in damages to 128 unrecognized sufferers of the Minamata disease. The state, prefecture and Chisso as well as some plaintiffs have appealed the ruling.
