High court overturns ruling; acquits 3 over fatal elevator accident

Mar 15, 2018 | News On Japan

Mar 15, 2018 (Japan Today) - A high court scrapped a lower court ruling Wednesday, acquitting an elevator maintenance company chairman and two others over an elevator accident in 2006 that killed a 16-year-old boy in Tokyo.

SEC Elevator Co Chairman Takao Suzuki, 74, President Hiroshi Nishimura, 58, and Kunio Nemoto, 71, who headed a maintenance section of the company, had previously been given suspended prison terms.

"There is no evidence showing that an abnormal abrasion of the braking system, the cause of the accident, had already occurred by the time an SEC worker checked (the elevator) on May 25, 2006, before the accident," Presiding Judge Yasuhiro Akiba at the Tokyo High Court said in handing down the ruling.

The ruling came after the acquittal of a maintenance official at Schindler Elevator KK, the producer of the elevator, was finalized in February.

On June 3, 2006, Hirosuke Ichikawa died after being wedged between the elevator and the elevator shaft at a housing complex in Tokyo's Minato Ward when it suddenly began to ascend while the doors were wide open. He was getting off the elevator at that time.

The Tokyo District Court in September 2015 ruled the three defendants had overlooked the abnormality that led to the accident and sentenced Suzuki and Nishimura to 18 months in prison, suspended for three years, and gave Nemoto a 14-month term, also suspended for three years.

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