OSAKA -- The Osaka High Court on Thursday upheld a lower court ruling ordering the publisher of a weekly magazine to pay damages to a woman suspected of murdering four people in 1998 by lacing curry with arsenic, for violating her portrait rights.
Tokyo-based Shinchosha Ltd. was ordered by the Osaka District Court in February to pay 6.6 million yen in damages to Masumi Hayashi, 41, for using a photograph and drawing of her without permission. However, in Thursday's ruling, the high court reduced the compensation amount to 4.4 million yen.
On May 26, 1999, Shinchosha published a photo of Hayashi taken during a court session, in which she was shown with a rope tied around her waist, in its weekly magazine Focus.