The Tokyo High Court basically upheld Wednesday a lower court ruling ordering the government to pay damages to residents in Ibaraki Prefecture hit by the 2015 Kinugawa river flooding.
In the lawsuit, residents in flooded areas along the river claimed that the government’s inadequate river management caused the vast disaster, seeking damages totaling about ¥220 million.
Yasushi Nakamura, the high court’s presiding judge, determined that the government is partially held responsible and ordered the payment of some ¥28 million in damages to the plaintiffs, down from about ¥39 million ordered by Mito District Court.
Tracing the district court’s ruling, Nakamura acknowledged that water overflowed from the river in the Wakamiyado and Kamimisaka districts of the city of Joso, in Ibaraki Prefecture, on Sept. 10, 2015, due to torrential rain caused by a typhoon, and flooded a wide area.
The judge pointed out that the Wakamiyado flood damage should be attributed to the government’s failure to protect a dune that was acting as a natural embankment from being excavated in a private-sector development project. But he reduced the compensation order after reevaluating damage to household chattels.
As for the Kamimisaka district, Nakamura brushed aside the plaintiffs’ claim that the government should take the blame for delaying its levee-raising work, saying, “Nothing particularly unreasonable was found in the levee renovation program.”
“I feel like we’re losers because the high court’s ruling is worse than the district court’s,” Kazumi Katakura, co-lead plaintiff, told reporters after the ruling, expressing intention to appeal to the Supreme Court.
An infrastructure ministry official in charge of the lawsuit said the ministry will appropriately respond to the latest court decision after consulting with other parties concerned.
