The Supreme Court on Friday ruled in favor of 222 former Radio Corp of America (RCA) workers who had been exposed to cancer-causing chemicals, overturning a 2020 lower court decision that denied their damage claims.
The Supreme Court remanded the case back to the High Court, saying that the exposure to toxic chemicals might have breached the appellants’ constitutional rights, even though a causal relationship with illness had not been established.
Separately, the Supreme Court upheld a High Court ruling from March 2020 that awarded NT$54.7 million (US$1.93 million at the current exchange rate) in compensation to 24 other plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit brought by former RCA employees and relatives of deceased or injured workers against RCA, its parent company and successor entities in 2004.
Photo: CNA
The High Court in 2020 ruled that the 24 plaintiffs were entitled to compensation for being exposed to toxic chemicals that might have sickened thousands of RCA workers at a factory in Taoyuan run by RCA from 1970 to 1992.
However, the lower court denied damages to 222 others, saying that they either had not proved that the chemicals caused their conditions or that they had no obvious exterior signs of being sick.
Supreme Court Judge Kao Meng-hsun (高孟焄) on Friday said that the High Court verdict was “problematic” and “controversial.”
The High Court had ruled that the plaintiffs’ burden of proof should be relieved, but still denied the damages based on what it called their failure to establish a causal relationship between their illness and the chemicals, she said.
The Constitution guarantees the right to bodily integrity and health, and breaches of this right do not necessarily result in diseases that can be diagnosed or require medical treatment, she added.
Kao said exposing someone to highly toxic chemicals, which result in a higher risk of becoming sick and causes stress for those exposed, might be a breach of their constitutional rights.
Employers are obliged to protect the health of their employees in the workplace, but the former RCA workers were provided with toxic drinking water and exposed to harmful substances at the Taoyuan factory, Kao said.
The High Court failed to take into account the psychological effects of the workers knowing they were exposed to toxins, she said.
RCA operated three major plants in Taiwan — in Taoyuan, Hsinchu and Yilan.
About 80,000 workers were employed at the three sites.
RCA was in 1986 taken over by US conglomerate General Electric (GE), which two years later sold the Taoyuan factory to Thomson Consumer Electronics, a US-based subsidiary of French firm Technicolor, before it moved production of electronic products to China.
Thomson in 1989 found severe pollution at the Taoyuan factory and shut it down a year later. Some of the factory’s workers had by then been diagnosed with cancer suspected of being caused by exposure to toxic chemicals.
In 1998, some of them founded a self-help organization to seek compensation through legal channels, triggering years of lawsuits involving nearly 2,000 plaintiffs.
Investigators found the firm liable for the workers’ illnesses, including cancer, saying that exposure to about 30 types of organic solvents, including the carcinogen trichloroethylene, had caused them.
The company was also found to have been dumping toxic waste close to its factory, contaminating the soil and underground water.
Joseph Lin (林永頌), an attorney who leads a group of volunteer lawyers involved in the litigation, said that the retrial by the High Court triggered by Friday’s ruling would likely take months or even years.
However, Lin said he was optimistic that his side would win and the 222 plaintiffs would receive their due compensation.
In a separate class lawsuit against RCA and three of its affiliates — GE, Thomson Consumer Electronics (Bermuda) and Technicolor — the Taipei District Court in December 2019 ruled in favor of 1,115 plaintiffs, awarding them a total of about NT$2.3 billion.
However, that ruling has been appealed, and the High Court is expected to issue a verdict next month.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS