(Update) High Court Overturns Ruling against Ex-TEPCO Executives

   Tokyo, June 6 (Jiji Press)--Tokyo High Court on Friday overturned a lower court ruling that ordered four former executives of Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. to pay about 13 trillion yen in damages in total over the March 2011 nuclear accident in Fukushima Prefecture, northeastern Japan.
   Toshikazu Kino, presiding judge at the high court, found the executives unable to predict the tsunami that triggered the triple reactor meltdown at TEPCO's Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
   In their lawsuit filed in March 2012, TEPCO shareholders demanded that five former executives pay some 23 trillion yen in damages to the company over the nuclear accident.
   In July 2022, Tokyo District Court ordered former TEPCO Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata, who died in October last year, former President Masataka Shimizu, 80, and former executive vice presidents Ichiro Takekuro, 79, and Sakae Muto, 74, to pay a total of 13,321 billion yen in compensation to the company. The ruling said that the executives had been able to predict the tsunami.
   In a separate criminal trial of Katsumata, Takekuro and Muto for their alleged professional negligence resulting in death and injury over the nuclear accident, the ruling that acquitted them became final in March this year.

(2025/06/06-15:35)