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.
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