Latest news with #Katsumata
Kyodo News
4 days ago
- Business
- Kyodo News
Court rejects Fukushima crisis damages order against ex-TEPCO execs
KYODO NEWS - 20 minutes ago - 11:23 | All, Japan A Japanese high court on Friday overturned a ruling ordering former executives of Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. to pay the utility damages for failing to prevent the 2011 crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. The decision by the Tokyo High Court came after a district court ordered the former executives in July 2022 to pay around 13 trillion yen ($90 billion) in compensation. Both the defendants and shareholders seeking the damages had appealed the ruling. The district court found the four former executives liable for compensation after the combined impact of a massive earthquake and tsunami on the plant in northeastern Japan in March 2011 caused one of the worst nuclear disasters in history. The focal point of the appeal trial was 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 district court found the late former Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata, former President Masataka Shimizu, and former Vice Presidents Sakae Muto and Ichiro Takekuro liable for damages. Katsumata's lawsuit was taken over by his heir. The acquittals of Takekuro and Muto in a criminal suit were finalized in March. Charges against Katsumata were dismissed after his death last October. Related coverage: 2nd melted fuel sample retrieved from crippled Fukushima reactor 1st dismantling of nuclear reactor begins in central Japan Japan court denies request to revoke extension of aging nuclear units
The Mainichi
4 days ago
- Business
- The Mainichi
Court rejects Fukushima crisis damages order against ex-TEPCO execs
TOKYO (Kyodo) -- A Japanese high court on Friday overturned a ruling ordering former executives of Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. to pay the utility damages for failing to prevent the 2011 crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. The decision by the Tokyo High Court came after a district court ordered the former executives in July 2022 to pay around 13 trillion yen ($90 billion) in compensation. Both the defendants and shareholders seeking the damages had appealed the ruling. The district court found the four former executives liable for compensation after the combined impact of a massive earthquake and tsunami on the plant in northeastern Japan in March 2011 caused one of the worst nuclear disasters in history. The focal point of the appeal trial was 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 district court found the late former Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata, former President Masataka Shimizu, and former Vice Presidents Sakae Muto and Ichiro Takekuro liable for damages. Katsumata's lawsuit was taken over by his heir. The acquittals of Takekuro and Muto in a criminal suit were finalized in March. Charges against Katsumata were dismissed after his death last October.
Japan Times
06-03-2025
- Politics
- Japan Times
Acquittal of two former Tepco executives to be finalized
The Supreme Court has upheld lower court rulings that acquitted two former executives of Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings over the 2011 nuclear crisis at its Fukushima No. 1 power plant. The top court's Second Petty Bench on Wednesday supported the lower courts' decisions that the accident was unpredictable and decided to dismiss an appeal by lawyers acting as prosecutors. The not-guilty verdict rejecting the plaintiffs' call for the former executives to be held criminally responsible will be finalized 14 years after the country's worst nuclear accident. The plant was damaged by the March 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and the subsequent tsunami. Former Executive Vice Presidents Ichiro Takekuro, 78, and Sakae Muto, 74, had been accused of business negligence resulting in death and injury. The latest ruling was made unanimously by the three justices of the bench. Justice Mamoru Miura was not involved in the judgment because he apparently investigated the case when he was a prosecutor. A case had already been dismissed against former Tepco Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata, who died in October last year at the age of 84. Former Executive Vice President Sakae Muto (center) enters the Tokyo High Court for the appellate court ruling in January 2023 in Tokyo's Chiyoda Ward. The lawyers acting as prosecutors pointed out that Takekuro, Muto and Katsumata received reports in 2008-2009 that a tsunami wave of up to 15.7 meters, higher than the elevation of the plant's premises, might hit the plant, based on a long-term earthquake and tsunami evaluation by a government agency. They sought five years in prison for the defendants, claiming that they postponed taking countermeasures and caused the deaths of 44 people, including those hospitalized. Meanwhile, the three former executives had pleaded not guilty, saying they could not have foreseen the accident. "The reliability of the long-term evaluation is low, and it cannot be regarded as information that would have enabled them to recognize the realistic possibility of a tsunami higher than 10 meters," the petty bench said. It concluded that it is difficult to think that a lower court ruling stating the accident could not have been predicted lacks rationality. The Tokyo District Court found the three not guilty in September 2019. The Tokyo High Court upheld the ruling in January 2023. Katsumata and other executives at the time of the accident faced criminal complaints in June 2012. But the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office decided not to indict any of them in September 2013. The three were indicted by the lawyers acting as prosecutors in February 2016, after a prosecution inquest panel twice overrode public prosecutors' decisions not to charge them.
