11:10 - 12:30, No.2 Conference Room
Workshop D
Asbestos Litigation in Japan
Chairs: Takeshi Furukawai and Barry Castleman
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Tetsuro Ota
Chief Lawyer of the primary plaintiff party for the Mitsubishi-Nagasaki Shipbuilding , Japan
ABSTRACT:
Our lawsuit started on 25 December 1998 and reached a settlement through negotiation on 7 June 2002. To begin with, we demanded a total payment of 1.28 billion yen in settlement for 77 plaintiff victims and 44 bereaved families. We then included in the settlement document that the defendant should clearly show the intention of apologies and commit themselves to prevent further pneumoconiosis suffering. It took 3 years and 5 months to reach a settlement, but in fact as long as 15 years of various efforts had been made before the filing of suit. We form a patients' group to promote communication between members while the labor unions made continuous efforts to negotiate with the firm to improve the dust-producing work environment. In 1997 just before the filing of suit, we organized a parent organization to the plaintiff party called the "Group for Requesting Mitsubishi Heavy Machinery for Pneumoconiosis Compensation" and negotiated with the firm mainly about compensation, which ended up in breakdown. If compared to volcanic activities, it was as if the magma had creating a subterranean thunder already before the filing of suit.
The defendant's plan was to prolong the trial by raising medical debates. To achieve this purpose, they committed an outrageous act by ignoring the current system, requesting to have every single plaintiff judged by CT scanning and even applied again for the issuance of official recognition of patients' arrangement categories for some plaintiffs. Despite such a desperate resistance by the defendant, the situation changed for the better all of a sudden when the Nagasaki District Court rejected the request for CT scanning and gave settlement advice on its authority.
The plaintiff party dissolved after the settlement, but we organized the "Mitsubishi-Nagasaki Group for Eradication of Pneumoconiosis" and have now been working with a constant awareness that the struggle for the eradication of pneumoconiosis is a struggle to protect human rights.