Photo/Illutration Lawyers for Minamata plaintiffs in a lawsuit heard by the Osaka District Court hoist signs Sept. 27 announcing a ruling in their favor. (Kenta Sujino)

OSAKA--The district court here handed down a ruling with potentially far-reaching ramifications by taking the side of plaintiffs who argued they should be covered by a special measures law providing government relief to victims of Minamata disease.

It was the first ruling in a district court for a group lawsuit. In this case, it involved 128 plaintiffs between the ages of 50 and 90 living in Osaka Prefecture and surrounding areas who argued they came down with the debilitating neurological disease after eating seafood contaminated with methylmercury.

The Osaka District Court on Sept. 27 ordered the central and Kumamoto prefectural governments, along with Chisso Corp., the company which in the 1950s and for much of the ’60s dumped industrial wastewater containing mercury into Minamata Bay in Kumamoto Prefecture, to collectively pay compensation to the plaintiffs.

The plaintiffs were not covered by a 2009 special measures law that provided relief to Minamata disease victims. Similar lawsuits have been filed in Kumamoto, Niigata and Tokyo.

The law has a provision for those not certified as Minamata disease victims under the central government’s standards. Assuming certain conditions are met, each person is eligible to receive a one-time payment of 2.1 million yen ($14,000), as well as support for medical treatment.

They are required under the conditions to have lived in one of nine municipalities in Kumamoto and Kagoshima prefectures for at least a year until 1968 when Chisso stopped dumping the wastewater into the sea.

By the July 2012 deadline, about 48,000 individuals had applied for the special provision, but only about 38,000 were recognized as eligible.

The plaintiffs in the Kinki region lawsuit once lived along the coast of the Sea of Shiranui that extends between Kumamoto and Kagoshima prefectures, but they all moved to the Kinki region to find jobs or marry.

They also faced circumstances not covered by the special measures law, such as being from municipalities besides the nine cited in the law, were born after 1969 or had never been diagnosed at a hospital for Minamata disease even though they displayed some of the symptoms, such as numbness and vision problems.

The plaintiffs argued it was irrational for them not to be covered by the law’s provisions since they once lived in the same region and ate the same seafood as Minamata disease victims.

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