Japan Top Court Finalizes Damages Order over Removal of Heckler
Tokyo, Aug. 20 (Jiji Press)--Japan's Supreme Court has upheld a ruling that ordered a prefectural government to pay 550,000 yen in damages over the police's removal of a heckler from a stump speech by the late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2019.
In the decision dated Monday, the top court's First Petty Bench, presided over by Justice Takuya Miyama, dismissed an appeal by the prefectural government of Hokkaido, northernmost Japan, in the lawsuit filed by a woman from the prefectural capital of Sapporo, finalizing the damages order issued by lower courts. All of the five justices at the Supreme Court supported the verdict.
According to the June 2023 ruling by Sapporo High Court, the woman shouted her opposition to a tax hike and to the ruling Liberal Democratic Party while Abe was giving a speech in front of Hokkaido Railway Co.'s Sapporo Station in July 2019, ahead of an election for the House of Councillors, the upper chamber of the country's parliament, later that month.
Hokkaido prefectural police officers in charge of security grabbed her shoulder and arm and moved her away from the location, and followed her around for about an hour in total. The woman filed the suit to seek damages for the psychological distress she claimed to have suffered from the incident.
The high court recognized the illegality of the police officers' acts, saying that they exerted unreasonable psychological pressure on the woman. The court also pointed out that the officers violated the plaintiff's freedom of expression, upholding the March 2022 order by Sapporo District Court that the Hokkaido government pay 550,000 yen in compensation.
(2024/08/20-17:14)
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