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Supreme Court rejects lawsuit over city's responsibility for accident in school

Saturday, 19 April 2008

CHIBA -- The Supreme Court has rejected a damages lawsuit filed against the Chiba Municipal Government by the family of an elementary school girl whose right eye was injured by a classmate at school.

The ruling overturns an earlier decision by the Tokyo High Court, which ordered the city to pay about 860,000 yen in compensation as the operator of the school where the incident occurred.

The girl was injured in May 2002, when a vest that the male classmate was swinging around hit her right eye. At the time, the teacher in charge of the class was talking to another pupil. In the lawsuit, the girl and her parents had argued that the teacher had neglected his responsibility to oversee the boy who injured her.

The top court rejected the claim, however, saying the teacher could not have predicted that accident would happen and had no responsibility in the matter. The court pointed out that the boy who injured the female student usually caused no problems, and until he swung the vest around he had not been behaving unnaturally.

An initial district court ruling in the case dismissed the lawsuit filed by the girl and her parents. However, a high court later ruled that the teacher had been negligent in failing to oversee the whole classroom. The Chiba Municipal Government had filed an appeal against the high court ruling.

The girl and her parents also sought damages directly from the parents of the boy, and a ruling that ordered the parents to pay about 860,000 yen in compensation has already become fixed.

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