The Namuco Bandai Games is known as a “Gacha-pon” maker in Japan. ”Gacha-pon” is transparent plastic sphere capsules in which small toys are inclosed. Whilst purchasers can get one of capsules in vending machines, they can not know which capsules appear from the machine. The figure of capsules is 40 mm in diameter.
Fact
A child, 2 years old and 10 months, swallowed it by mistake; whilst the capsules was removed from his throat after 30 munits, he suffered low-oxygen injury; therefore residual disability by that he could not move himself remained. His parents claimed that the capsules had design defect and Bandai should pay their son 180,000,000 yen as damage compensation based on product liability.
Ruling
Kagoshima District Court, on 20th May 2008, approved the product liability of Bandai and ordered Bandai to pay about 26,260,000; the court stated that whilst the damage of plaintiffs was 79,540,000 yen, they had comparative negligence and the amount of compensation should be reduced by 70 percent.
Bandai insisted that the capsules met the safety standard regulated by the Japan Toy Maker Association. According to the standard, the size of the capsules should be more than 31.8 mm in diameter, when the intended users were under 3 year old of age.
However, the ruling rejected such claim of the defendant: the width of mouth of infants who were under 3 years of age might be possibly more than 4 cm in diameter and therefore the standard was not enough to prevent accidents; the capsules should be cubic figure to be able to remove from throat or should have porosity to establish an airway.
Influence of the ruling
In some common law jurisdictions, declaratory judgment is a form of equitable relief. But, unfortunately, we have no declaratory judgement system. Any court including the supreme court can not make a decision generally and abstractly beyond the concerned case.
However, I think that this court case might result more than a transfer of money. The Namuko Bandai would appeal this case to the higher court, Fukuoka Court of Appeal. Simultaneously, the METI would be supposed to seek reviewing the safety standard regarding a self regulation in the defendant as well as industry associations of this kind of toys to prevent such a tragedy from ever happening again. The direction or guidance of concerning regulatory authority, the METI, might work significantly to the related maker and industry than the statutory regulations or court decisions whereas It is true that the Namco Bandai is not forced to comply with any requests to change their safety standards.
At present, the government considers establishing a comprehensive administrative body concerning consumer affairs. The comming reform means that the METI would lose his authorities about the consumer protections in his jurisdiction. The METI resists the transferring his jurisdiction to the new consumer affairs department by arguing that the ministry perform his role enough. This ruling might verify such argument of the METI.
