The Supreme Court on Tuesday last week upheld two lower-court rulings that the family of a man who jumped to his death and killed a female vegetable vendor in the process should pay NT$5.2 million (US$172,157) in compensation to the woman’s family.
The ruling was final.
The suicide case involved a man, surnamed Lin, who in April last year jumped from the seventh floor of a building next to his residence in Nantou County and landed on top of a woman, surnamed Chen, who was operating a vegetable stall below.
Both Lin and Chen died from their injuries.
Chen’s husband and five children then filed a civil lawsuit demanding compensation from Lin’s wife and three children.
Chen’s husband asserted in asking for the compensation that he and his wife had been married for 50 years, and that he dropped off and picked up his wife at the scene of the accident every day.
Saying that he and their five children were deeply grieved by the sudden loss of their loved one, he demanded NT$6.5 million in compensation for their psychological trauma, High Court records showed.
However, Lin’s widow argued during the trial that her husband had suffered from mental illness for a long time and his disorder flared up at the time of the incident, affecting his ability to make rational decisions.
In addition, the widow argued, the vegetable vendor’s death could have been avoided if she had not been illegally operating the stall.
In its ruling, the High Court in Taichung found that Lin was capable of making decisions based on two factors — the Tsaotun Psychiatric Center where Lin was being treated could not confirm that his death was tied to his delusions and that Lin showed judgement by jumping from a neighbor’s apartment rather than his own to shield his family from his suicide.
The High Court also said stalls have long operated outside Lin’s residence and it felt Lin could have foreseen that his act could injure others.
It therefore determined that there was a causal link between Lin’s fall and Chen’s death, and that Lin’s family should compensate Chen’s.
Based on the finances of Lin’s family, the court ruled that it should pay NT$1.2 million to Chen’s husband and NT$800,000 to each of her five children.
The Supreme Court backed the High Court’s reasoning.
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