Tokyo court orders to pay $95 billion in damages over Fukushima crisis

A Tokyo court on July 13 ordered former executives of Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc (TEPCO) to pay the utility $95 billion in total damages for failing to prevent the 2011 crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

The ruling in favour of shareholders who filed the lawsuit in 2012 is the first to find former TEPCO executives liable for compensation after the nuclear plant in northeastern Japan caused one of the worst nuclear disasters in history triggered by a massive earthquake and tsunami in March 2011, The Japan Times reported on July 13. 

In the lawsuit against the former executives, 48 shareholders sought a total of around 22 trillion yen ($160 billion) in damages to be paid to the company, the largest amount ever claimed for compensation in a civil lawsuit in Japan, according to a lawyer representing the plaintiffs.

Among five defendants -- former Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata, former vice presidents Sakae Muto and Ichiro Takekuro, former President Masataka Shimizu and former Managing Director Akio Komori -- the court found all but Komori liable to pay the damages.

The trial's focus was whether management could predict a nuclear accident triggered by a giant tsunami, a similar argument faced by three defendants when they were acquitted in a district court criminal trial in 2019.

The trial also examined whether the management's decisions on tsunami countermeasures were appropriate after a TEPCO unit estimated in 2008 that a tsunami of up to 15.7 meters could hit the plant based on the government's long-term earthquake assessment made public in 2002.

The shareholders said the government's evaluation was the "best scientific assessment," but the management postponed taking preventive steps, such as installing a seawall.

The former executives' lawyers said the assessment lacked reliability and that the accident occurred when the management was asking a civil engineering association to study whether the utility should incorporate the evaluation into its countermeasures.