The plaintiffs expressed delight at the ruling, unfurling banners outside the court that read “shareholders win” and “responsibility recognised”. When the lawsuit was first filed, Hiroyuki Kawai, the lead lawyer in the case, said it was important that the officials who had failed to act be held accountable. “Warnings have to be issued that, if you make the wrong decisions or do wrong, you must compensate with your own money,” he told a press conference in 2012. “You may have to sell your house,” he said. “You may have to spend your retirement years in misery. In Japan, nothing can be resolved and no progress can be made without assigning personal responsibility.” The ruling comes less than a month after Japan’s Supreme Court dismissed a damages lawsuit filed against the national government by 3,700 people whose lives were impacted by the nuclear accident. The vast majority were forced to evacuate their homes as radiation levels spiked around the plant in the days after the accident and many are still unable to return to their communities. The court ruled that the government would have been unable to force Tepco to implement preventative measures at the Fukushima plant.
