SENDAI--The district court here blamed a driving school for the deaths of 26 people in the 2011 tsunami and ordered it to pay 1.91 billion ($16.2 million) in compensation to surviving family members.
SENDAI--The district court here blamed a driving school for the deaths of 26 people in the 2011 tsunami and ordered it to pay 1.91 billion ($16.2 million) in compensation to surviving family members.
In his Jan. 13 ruling, Presiding Judge Kenji Takamiya said the Joban-Yamamoto driving school in Yamamoto, Miyagi Prefecture, "could have foreseen that a tsunami was coming, but failed to fulfill its obligation to evacuate students" after lessons were completed.
According to the Sendai District Court ruling, after the magnitude-9.0 Great East Japan Earthquake struck at 2:46 p.m. on March 11, 2011, school operators instructed students to exit the school building.
They subsequently decided to cut short the day's lessons and began driving students home around 3:40 p.m. However, 23 students were overcome by the tsunami en route.
Two students who returned to the school after driving practice were swept away while walking home. A part-time worker died at the school.
The lawsuit is the second in which a court has ordered a defendant to pay compensation for damage due to the tsunami, and the first in which compensation was ordered involving an employee at a tsunami-stricken facility.
The plaintiffs included 46 surviving family members of the 25 students, who were between the ages of 18 and 19 at the time. Two surviving kin of the 27-year-old part-time worker who died were also part of the suit, which was filed in October 2011.
During the trial, school operators argued that they could not have foreseen that a tsunami would hit. However, the court ruled that the staff must have heard the tsunami warning and calls to evacuate made by firetrucks in the area.
The court also said most of the students were helpless to evacuate on their own without using the school's vehicles.
"Many students were unfamiliar with the local geography and they could not have evacuated except by using vehicles for transporting them to and from the school," the ruling said.
The court added that the driving school had an obligation to ensure the students' safety even after their lessons were completed.
"The school failed to live up to the obligation to swiftly evacuate the students to an evacuation area designated by the town government and transport the students along a safe route."
Some of the plaintiffs in the case said they were only able to overcome the tragedy because of the support provided by other plaintiffs who were in a position to understand the hardship they faced.