Damages awarded against Yokohama city and Kanagawa prefecture….
Damages awarded against Yokohama city and Kanagawa prefecture in the Yokohama City Nara Junior High School Judo Club case
The Yokohama District Court, on December 27, 2011, awarded damages of 89.2 million yen against the city and the prefecture in the civil case of Nara Junior High School Judo Club, a decision in favor of the plaintiff.
On December 24, 2004, the defendant who was 15 years old at the time, was trained in an almost violent way by the instructor of the judo club, and the boy had acute subdural hemorrhage when he collapsed.
His life was saved following an emergency operation at the hospital, but he had severe high-level brain dysfunction and still suffers from serious effects.
The city and the prefecture denied any causal relationship between judo practice and the accident, stressing that practice was “appropriate as it stayed within the scope of the instruction”.
They also stated that “there was no hard blow of the head” because of lack of marks of fracture or stroke on the head. Since it is rare for the vein of the head to be severed as a result of throwing in judo they fully contested that “it was impossible to foresee it”.
The Yokohama District Court clearly recognized in the reasons for judgement a causal relationship between practice and the accident, pointing out that “The male student had subdural hemorrhage because his cerebral vein was injured by the rotational force applied by the instructor.”
Furthermore the court pointed out that during free practice (randori) the boy lost consciousness due to choking by the instructor, and that if the instructor continued to perform judo techniques, it was fully possible that serious injuries may have developed.
The defendant’s denial of causal relationship between practice and the accident, as well as their inability to foresee an incident were fully rejected in the court’s decision.
As in the civil case of the Judo School in Matsumoto Nagano and the criminal case of the Judo School Death in Konohanaku Osaka, acceleration injuries causing severance of pontine vein (bridging vein) due to judo throws, was clearly recognized in the court ruling, even without hard hitting of the head or clear injury on the head.
The ruling, which determined the cause of the accident and recognized the foreseeability of the incident as well as lack of safety awareness of the instructor, offers a significant development.
