yokota

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High Court orders government to pay 3.25 bil yen in Yokota new noise suit

The Tokyo High Court on November 30 ordered the government to pay 3.25 billion yen to about 6,000 plaintiffs as compensation for noise pollution caused by aircraft landing and taking off from the U.S. Yokota Air Base in western Tokyo.

This amount is the highest for a lawsuit of this kind. The 2002 district court ruling ordered the state to pay 2.24 billion yen, to which both the plaintiffs and the government had appealed to the high court.

The large number of plaintiffs demand that the U.S. and Japanese governments end early morning and nighttime U.S. aircraft flights and pay damages for noise pollution that makes them almost impossible to even have phone conversation or listen to TV programs in their houses.

Though the high court didn't accept their appeal to stop early morning and nighttime flights as did the lower court, this was the first ruling for a settlement that ordered the government to pay damages for the period between the day the hearing concluded and to the day of the ruling.

The judge criticized the government for lacking any system to compensate sufferers from the noise pollution despite the fact that the Supreme Court twice ruled that the noise from the base has been unacceptable.

The high court also ruled that the government is to blame for leaving residents to suffer under noise registered at more than 75 on the Weighted Equivalent Continuous Perceived Noise Level.

Since the first lawsuit in 1981 calling for suspension of flights at certain times and compensation for damages, seven court rulings, including two by the Supreme House, claimed the government responses as illegal.

At the press conference on the same day, plaintiffs and their lawyers stated, "The sentence can be appreciated on the whole in that it held the government responsible and ordered it to pay a record high amount in compensation, although it didn't accept our demand for limiting flight-times and even limited the area claimed as being affected by the noise pollution."

Ohno Yoshikazu, the plaintiffs' representative, said, "The ruling blamed the government for neglecting to take steps as called for by the past rulings. This will greatly encourage citizens involved in similar court struggles calling for base pollution to be discontinued."
- Akahata, December 1, 2005