A court in central Japan ordered the government today to pay compensation to a woman who argued that her husband died from overwork at Toyota Motor Corp., Japan's largest automaker, officials said.
Hiroko Uchino filed the suit after a local Labor Ministry office rejected applications for worker's compensation benefits she filed after the death of her husband, Kenichi, said Hiroko Tamaki, a lawyer for the plaintiff.
The Labor Ministry office said the case did not qualify as death from overwork, according to the lawyer.
In today's ruling, the Nagoya District Court ordered the government to reverse the local office's decision and pay compensation, court official Chie Hara said. Hara refused to give other details.
Death from overwork, known as “karoshi” in Japanese, has steadily increased since the government first recognized it in 1987.
The government acknowledged 147 cases of death from overwork from 303 applications in the year ending in March 2007, according to ministry figures.
As a middle manager in charge of quality control at a Toyota factory in Toyota City, Kenichi Uchino had been putting in long hours before he collapsed at work and died in February 2002 at age 30, the lawyer said.
He had worked more than 80 hours of overtime per month for at least six months before his death, and in the month before his death put in 114 hours of overtime, the lawyer said.
Toyota, which was not involved in the suit, said the company was not in a position to comment.
