Court Orders Former Tepco Managers To Pay Damages For Fukushima Plant Losses
A Tokyo court has ruled that former managers of Tokyo Electric Power Company must pay damages to the utility, as demanded by its shareholders.
The shareholders claimed the company incurred massive losses from the 2011 accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
They include costs for decommissioning the plant's crippled reactors and compensation for local residents who had to evacuate.
The shareholders demanded 22 trillion yen, or more than 160 billion dollars, from five individuals who held managerial posts.
On Wednesday, the Tokyo District Court ordered four of them to pay a total of 13.3 trillion yen, or about 97 billion dollars.
The trial focused on the reliability of a long-term assessment of possible seismic activities issued by a government panel in 2002, nine years prior to the accident.
The shareholders claimed the assessment was reliable, and that the managers should have done more to safeguard the plant against a huge tsunami that they knew would come.
The former managers, on the other hand, claimed the assessment had low credibility, so they could not foresee damage from a massive tsunami.
They argued that even if they did, they would not have had time to take necessary preventive measures.
The shareholders filed their lawsuit in 2012. In October last year, the presiding judge inspected the plant compound for the first time.