Editorial

16:00 JST, January 28, 2025

Society should make it possible for people with disabilities to work in the same way as those without disabilities. The message that the judiciary has sent must be accepted.

In a lawsuit over the 2018 accident in Osaka City in which an 11-year-old girl, who was hard of hearing, was fatally struck by heavy machinery on a sidewalk, the Osaka High Court ruled that the lost earnings the girl would have received from working in the future were the same amount compared to people without disabilities.

Lost earnings are calculated based on income before accidents, but since children have no income, the average wage of all workers is used as the base for the calculation. Rulings in the past have tended to consider the work capacity of those who are disabled to be low, so the Osaka District Court, in its ruling, had set the girl’s lost earnings at “85% of the........

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