The Sendai High Court on Friday overturned a 2002 lower court ruling and ordered seven people to pay a total 57.6 million yen to parents of a 13-year-old boy killed in a bullying incident in 1993 in Shinjo, Yamagata Prefecture.
But the court rejected the family's damages claim against the Shinjo Municipal Government.
The lawyers for the seven said they plan to appeal.
The parents of Yuhei Kodama had demanded 194 million yen from the seven and the city of Shinjo, which runs Meirin Junior High School, where the boy was killed.
The boy died Jan. 13, 1993, after being rolled up in a mattress in the school gymnasium's storeroom.
The parents charged that the seven -- then students at the same school -- bullied the boy, pushed him into the mattress roll and left him there to suffocate. They also sued the city for failure to adequately supervise the children and negligence for not stopping the bullying against their son.
In March 2002, the Yamagata District Court rejected the parents' damages claim, saying that the confessions the seven students made to police, in which they admitted their involvement in the boy's death, were not credible. The lawyers for the seven have argued that they had been coerced by investigators into making the confessions.
The lower court, which had ruled the seven were not guilty, contradicted rulings from past criminal trials.
The seven, aged 12 to 14 at the time of the incident, were arrested or taken into custody five days after the incident for allegedly injuring and confining Yuhei and causing his death.