Patients newly recognized as victims of a 1968 mass food poisoning across western Japan filed a ¥286 million damages suit Friday against the manufacturer of the contaminated cooking oil, Kanemi Soko K.K., and two of its officials.
The suit, filed by 26 plaintiffs with the Kokura branch of the Fukuoka District Court, is the first collective legal action since a legal struggle to seek compensation concluded in 1987.
Many of the plaintiffs were recognized as victims of the food poisoning, caused by cooking oil contaminated by polychlorinated biphenyl and dioxin, under new diagnostic criteria introduced in 2004. The concentration of PCB and dioxin in blood began to be counted in that year.