Dismissing Qualification as Patients of Minamata Disease

Kumamoto District Court dismissed the lawsuit by the residents in the prefectures of Kumamoto or Kagoshima, who demanded being qualified as the patients of the Minamata disease. The court did not recognize the plaintiffs as the patients of Minamata disease or found them too late to sue for it. The decision was totally different from the one in Osaka last year.

Minamata disease is caused by eating fish polluted by mercury emitted from a chemical factory of Chisso Corporation in Minamata city, Kumamoto. The government confirmed in 1968 that the disease was caused by release of methylmercury from the factory. It is known as one of the four major pollution disease in Japan at the time of rapid economic growth era after the World War II.

 

The patients filed lawsuits demanding Chisso, the government of Japan or local government compensation for damages on their health, and the court ordered the compensation in 1973. Although the Diet passed a law for relieving the victims in 2009, some people who were not applied the law filed lawsuits to four regional courts. The decision of Kumamoto court was one of those four lawsuits.

 

Kumamoto court found 119 plaintiffs out of 144 were not recognized as the patients of the Minamata disease. It concluded that only the diagnosis by local medical doctors would not be sufficient for proving the damage, and focused on the relationship between the damages on patient’s sense and ingestion of mercury.

 

Although the court recognized the rest of 25 as patients of Minamata disease, the court decided that they filed their lawsuits too late to be qualified as the plaintiffs. It was supposed that the plaintiffs realized their symptoms in 1970s, and they filed the lawsuits in 2013. The court determined that the right of claiming compensation was disappeared after twenty years from developing the symptom.

 

The government of Japan has not made broad research on the sufferers of Minamata disease, making difficult to determine who is the patient and who is not. The patients have been increasing even after the government took measures to compensate for the disease. The court had to decide on whether a plaintiff was a patient or not depending on each condition.

 

The decision of Osaka District Court determined all the 128 plaintiffs as the patients and ordered the government compensation, making a clear contrast from the decision of Kumamoto. Osaka court did not apply disqualification period, even though the plaintiffs were late in filing their lawsuit. It is required for the government to set a standard for determining who is the patient.

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