Appellate Court Judgment in the National Compensation Lawsuit in the Suraj Case

On January 18, 2016, the Tokyo High Court, Courtroom 825, handed down its ruling in the appeal of Ms. Suraj's national compensation lawsuit. Attendance tickets were distributed, and the courtroom was filled to capacity.

The presiding judge announced that the original judgment was overturned and the claims of the plaintiffs in the first instance were dismissed.

The following points were read aloud as reasons for the decision:

Regarding the sequence of events leading to death, Suraj had already lost consciousness before assuming the forward-bending position that the plaintiffs had raised as the issue.
Regarding the cause of death, there were no significant findings of asphyxiation; on the contrary, the CTAVN was quite large in Suraj's heart and must have caused considerable damage. As the six doctors (doctors hired by the defendant) stated, the cause of death was a fatal arrhythmia caused by the CTAVN.
Regarding the illegality under the National Compensation Act, the restraint actions taken by the security officer were reasonable, and even if the stress of the restraint induced symptoms of CTAVN, the security officer could not have foreseen this. Therefore, the restraint actions were not illegal.
Regarding the failure to provide first aid, deaths at CTAVN cannot be resuscitated with AEDs, so even if the security officer neglected his duty to provide first aid, there is no causal relationship between that and Suraj's death.

As described above, everything that had been won in the district court was overturned. Based on written evidence from renowned doctors (some of whom didn't even remember the name of the disease, CTAVN), whom the government had hired at great expense, the court determined that Suraj had died from CTAVN, a rare disease, before the security officers could have subdued him. It was also determined that such a disease could not have been foreseen by the security officers, and that resuscitation would have been difficult, so the security officers were not at fault.

Even after the court adjourned, voices from the spectators could be heard saying things like, "This is not the kind of verdict we came to hear," "Is such a verdict even possible?", and "Is this a verdict handed down by a human being?"

I have quickly provided a brief report on the verdict.