By ERI NIIYA/ Staff Writer
August 18, 2020 at 16:50 JST
The plaintiff, right, holds a news conference in August 2019 in which she talks about being the victim of false rumors tied to a road rage incident that drew national attention. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)
The Tokyo District Court on Aug. 17 ordered a former politician to pay 330,000 yen ($3,125) to a woman who sued him for defamation, ruling that his Facebook post incorrectly tied her to a high-profile road rage case.
The woman, who runs a company, filed a lawsuit against an Aichi Prefecture municipal assembly member in October 2019 that accused him of spreading vicious, unfounded rumors linking her to a crime. She sought 1.1 million yen in compensation.
According to the court's ruling, Takashi Harada, 58, a former member of the Toyota city assembly, quoted a tweet on his Facebook page that said the Tokyo woman was involved in an assault that occurred on the Joban Expressway in Ibaraki Prefecture in August 2019.
During the incident, a male driver allegedly pulled in front of a company employee’s car on the expressway and eventually forced him to stop. The man then attacked the company employee and fled afterward.
A video shot at the scene showed a woman in the assailant’s car photographing the attack on her mobile phone.
Media reports of the incident sparked a nationwide manhunt, during which Harada posted a picture of the Tokyo woman on his Facebook page and commented, “Please spread the message so that police can arrest her soon.”
The court's ruling said the posts damaged the woman's social reputation, as she had nothing to do with the incident.
Harada had argued that any harm to the woman's reputation was caused by multiple anonymous social media posts and that she had already been compensated for it with settlement money she received from other people at fault.
The court rejected the argument.
The plaintiff’s lawyer said the woman’s Instagram account was inundated with more than 1,000 abusive messages because of the wrongful accusation.
The woman has submitted a request to disclose the information about more than 100 such comments on social media and has agreed to settle with some of the people who posted them.
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