![\"nariwai](\"https:\/\/cnic.jp\/english\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/nariwai-photo1.jpg\")
<\/a>The verdict in the “Give us back our livelihoods, give us back our communities” trial, which residents of Fukushima who had become evacuees due to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station (FDNPS) accident had initiated at the Fukushima District Court, was handed down on October 10. The verdict fully recognized both the government’s and Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO)’s liability for the accident; the government for failing to exercise its responsibility with regard to safety regulations at FDNPS and TEPCO, as the operator of the nuclear power plant, for failure to fulfill its duty in taking safety measures.\u00a0 The verdict stated that while the government should have completed estimates for projections of inundation due to a large tsunami by 2002, in accordance with the recommendations of the government\u2019s Earthquake Research Headquarters, it did not do so. Since use of these estimates would have enabled the prediction of an accident leading to a total loss of power due to the onslaught of a tsunami that exceeded the height of the FDNPS site, the government was liable for failure to exercise its regulatory powers to have TEPCO take countermeasures against such an accident. The court also recognized that TEPCO, the operator of FDNPS, was also liable for having neglected to take due care in establishing appropriate tsunami countermeasures at the nuclear power plant.
\u00a0 The 3,824 plaintiffs in the lawsuit included\u00a0 both residents in the Fukushima Prefecture compulsory evacuation zones as well as residents in areas of high dose rates comparable with those zones and residents in Miyagi, Ibaraki or Tochigi Prefectures, adjacent to those areas.\u00a0 The plaintiffs claimed damages from the government and TEPCO for having been deprived of a peaceful daily life due to evacuation, demanding that the air dose rate in their former homes be returned to the condition existing before the nuclear accident (roughly 0.04 milliSieverts). Plaintiffs whose return home was considered to be \u201cdifficult\u201d also claimed \u201ccompensation for loss of hometown.\u201d
\u00a0 Regarding the demand for \u201crestoration of the status quo ante\u201d the verdict stated that this \u201cwas understandable from a sympathetic point of view,\u201d but dismissed the demand by stating that, \u201csince the plaintiffs did not specify the content of the actions demanded, the claim is not applicable to a civil case.\u201d The \u201ccompensation for loss of hometown\u201d was also not recognized. On the other hand, the court recognized a breach of the right of subsistence for 2,907 plaintiffs and certified the applicable region as larger than the government\u2019s policy on the geographical scope for compensation. Damages for so-called \u201cvoluntary evacuation\u201d (people who evacuated on a voluntary basis, not in accordance with government instructions) was also recognized with the stipulation of additional payments to be made over and above the compensations already paid out. In total, the court ordered the government to make payments of 250 million yen and TEPCO to pay out 500 million yen.
\u00a0 The plaintiffs\u2019 association and the lawyer’s group have appealed to the Sendai High Court for insufficiencies in the scope and amounts of the compensations in addition to the ruling dismissing the \u201crestoration of the status quo ante.\u201d The government and TEPCO have also lodged an appeal, saying that \u201cthe verdict is unacceptable,\u201d and thus the struggle of the evacuated residents with regard to the government and TEPCO\u2019s liability is set to continue for some time to come.
\u00a0 This is the second verdict to recognize the liability of both the government and TEPCO for the nuclear accident, following the March 2017 verdict In the Maebashi District Court. In September 2017, the Chiba District Court, while recognizing the possibility of prediction by the government, did not recognize the failure of the government to exercise its regulatory powers.<\/p>\n
<Masako Sawai, CNIC><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The verdict in the “Give us back our livelihoods, give us back our communities” trial, which residents of Fukushima who had become evacuees due to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station (FDNPS) accident...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[89,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fukushima-daiichi-evacuees","category-lawsuit"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cnic.jp\/english\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cnic.jp\/english\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cnic.jp\/english\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cnic.jp\/english\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cnic.jp\/english\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4018"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cnic.jp\/english\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4018\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4019,"href":"https:\/\/cnic.jp\/english\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4018\/revisions\/4019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cnic.jp\/english\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cnic.jp\/english\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cnic.jp\/english\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}