So this 91-year-old who had dementia wondered off by himself and got hit by a train, and died. The Japanese authorities are holding the family of the 91-year-old man responsible for damages to the train, and loss of business revenue, that were caused by the 91-year-old man being hit. This is like the complete opposite of what would happen in the US or Europe. Family of 91-year-old dementia sufferer struck by train ordered to pay JR compensation August 2013 Tokyo - The Nagoya District Court has ruled that the family of a man with dementia who entered a railway line and consequently died after being hit by a train must pay compensation to the Japan Railway (JR) Group. The court concluded that the measures the family put in place to prevent the 91-year-old from wandering off by himself were insufficient. The family is being ordered to pay damages after delays caused by the accident resulted in a loss of earnings for the company. The presiding judge at the court where the ruling was made on Aug 9, commented that the man wandered outside while his wife had her back turned, concluding that it was her responsibility to keep track of the man’s activities. The judge also suggested that although the man’s eldest son lived apart from the family, he was officially registered as a supervisor of the man and should have put measures in place to prevent this type of accident from occurring. The elderly man entered onto the tracks at Kyowa Station in Obushi city, Aichi Prefecture in December 2007 where he was hit, and consequently killed, by a Tokaido main line train. The man had been diagnosed as requiring care in February of the same year. In response to the judge’s ruling, the family contested that it was impossible for the wife, who was 85 at the time, to watch the man around the clock. However, the judge pointed out that if that were the case, the family should have sought outside support, but failed to do so. https://japantoday.com/category/nat...truck-by-train-ordered-to-pay-jr-compensation Sounds really harsh. The family is being blamed for the accident. Perhaps should not be too surprising in Japan's very Conservative-minded society, and these Asian societies (Japan, China, Korea) tend to have a view of collective responsibility and strong family values, and are more inclined to hold family members responsible for the actions of another family member. This is a completely different legal logic from what we in the West are used to. I don't agree with it. Should the family be punished for trying to take care of the grandpa themselves instead of putting him in an impersonal nursing care facility that probably would have been very expensive? Why does there always seem to be an inherent human tendency to look for people to blame and punish when there has been a tragedy?
Compensation isn’t really punishment as such and I suspect in this kind of case, that’s more about how corporate insurance works as anything else. Unless they’re sociopaths, nothing is going to punish the family more than the tragic loss of a husband and father. The article obviously doesn’t give enough detail and what will always be a unique and complex set of circumstances, but it does suggest the man’s son was official registered as his father’s career but didn’t live with them or apparently provide sufficient support for his elderly mother. That support wouldn’t need to be a care home but could have involved in-home support, though that does indeed cost a lot of money, cost pressures aren’t mentioned as a factor. The mention of a care home does raise an interesting question though. Had the man been living in that kind of environment and had been allowed to wander off on to rail lines, do you think the staff and owners would have been "only" paying compensation?
You happen to have reliable sources to support that statement? Would be interesting to see how common these things are.
The case went all the way up to the Supreme Court and the elderly man's family ended up winning it. JR Tokai lost the case, being unable to claim compensation from the family. I guess the railway company was determined to be greedy by the Supreme Court as it was an unavoidable accident.
