Sumitomo Corp is not liable for damage caused by the derailment of Puyuma Express No. 6432 in 2018 and does not need to pay compensation to the Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA), the Taipei District Court said yesterday.
The nation’s largest railway operator was seeking NT$610 million (US$22.01 million) from the Tokyo-based train manufacturer after the Taitung-bound express crashed on Dec. 21, 2018, near Sinma (新馬) Station in Yilan County’s Suao Township (蘇澳), killing 18 people and injuring more than 200.
“We have yet to receive the official ruling from the court, but we will consult our lawyers before considering further legal action,” the TRA said after the ruling.
Photo: Wang Meng-lun, Taipei Times
The TRA’s lawsuit said that the derailment occurred because of an ill-designed air compressor and a missing connection between the automatic train protection (ATP) and telemonitoring systems.
It was seeking compensation from Sumitomo for the casualties caused by the derailment, as well as for damage to the train, railway facilities and its business, the TRA said.
Sumitomo said that the air compressor malfunctioned on the day of the crash because the TRA failed to conduct thorough maintenance of the train and regularly replace parts, not because the air compressor’s design was flawed.
“The telemonitoring system, which monitors the ATP system, is not designed to slow down a train or reactivate the ATP when it is turned off,” the manufacturer said. “Train drivers’ strict adherence to the speed limit set for each railway section is the only way to ensure that a train maintains a safe operating speed.”
The court ruled in Sumitomo’s favor, saying that the Puyuma Express overturned and derailed because of excessive speed.
There was no causal link between the malfunctioning air compressor and the derailment, the court said.
A CECI Engineering Consultants report, which the TRA submitted as evidence, showed that the air compressor was only a remote cause of the crash, not a direct cause, the court said.
The TRA in 2013 completed testing the tilting trains it purchased from Sumitomo and gave its full acceptance of purchases on Dec. 23, 2014, the court said.
From 2014 to 2018, the railway agency had not fully tested the connection between the ATP and telemonitoring systems, nor had it detected any abnormality with the ATP system, the court said.
The damage caused by the derailment was the result of human behavior and poorly functioning machines, it said.
“Even if the ATP system had been connected properly to the telemonitoring system and the telemonitoring system could detect a deactivated ATP, it would not have prevented the crash, which was the result of years of systemic dysfunction in the TRA,” the court said.
On Oct. 18, the Yilan District Court sentenced train driver Yu Chen-chung (尤振仲) to four years and six months in jail for negligence leading to the crash.
Prosecutors have appealed the decision, which is being reviewed by the Taiwan High Court.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
A bipartisan group of US senators has introduced a bill to enhance cooperation with Taiwan on drone development and to reduce reliance on supply chains linked to China. The proposed Blue Skies for Taiwan Act of 2026 was introduced by Republican US senators Ted Cruz and John Curtis, and Democratic US senators Jeff Merkley and Andy Kim. The legislation seeks to ease constraints on Taiwan-US cooperation in uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), including dependence on China-sourced components, limited access to capital and regulatory barriers under US export controls, a news release issued by Cruz on Wednesday said. The bill would establish a "Blue UAS
RSS