The Taiwan High Court on Thursday ruled in favor of 1,112 former Radio Corp. of America (RCA) factory workers exposed to cancer-causing chemicals but reduced their compensation from NT$2.3 billion (US$78.9 million) previously awarded by a lower court to NT$1.66 billion.
In December 2019, the Taipei District Court awarded 1,115 plaintiffs a total of NT$2.3 billion in a class action lawsuit brought in 2016 by 1,120 former employees and relatives of deceased or injured workers against RCA and its parent and successor companies.
The case was appealed by both sides and the high court on Thursday overturned the lower court’s decision about the compensation ruling that 1,112 plaintiffs were entitled to damages totaling NT$1.66 billion.
In its press statement summarizing the verdict, the court did not make clear why both the amount of the total compensation and the number of claimants were reduced, saying only that it had taken into consideration the situation of individual former RCA workers and the ruling of similar cases at home and abroad.
Shortly after the verdict was delivered, dozens of former RCA workers who are part of the self-help group that filed the lawsuit, and members of the Taiwan Association for Victims of Occupational Injuries, expressed their disappointment outside the high court building.
They said they would appeal the case, as the compensation is “far below a reasonable amount.”
Joseph Lin (???), an attorney who heads the group of lawyers in the lawsuit, told CNA that the high court agreed with the lower court’s ruling that RCA and subsequent plant owners General Electric (GE), Thomson Consumer Electronics, and Technicolor SA were liable for the illnesses, including cancer, contracted by its factory workers due to exposure to harmful chemicals.
However, Lin said he could not fathom why the high court lowered the compensation, adding that the amount awarded by the lower court was already “minimal” compared to similar cases overseas. The plaintiffs had sought total damages of NT$7.3 billion.
The high court said in its statement that RCA exposed workers at its factories in Taoyuan and Hsinchu to toxic chemicals, including carcinogen trichloroethylene, without providing protection to those workers or informing them of potential health risks.
In addition, the company was also found to have dumped toxic waste close to its Taoyuan factory, contaminating the soil as well as underground water that was used by its workers for drinking and showering.
RCA operated three major plants in Zhubei in Hsinchu County, Yilan County, and what was then Taoyuan County, now the municipality of Taoyuan, from 1970 to 1992.
The three factories employed around 80,000 workers at their peak.
In 1986, RCA was taken over by American multinational conglomerate GE, which sold the Taoyuan factory in 1988 to Thomson Consumer Electronics, the U.S. subsidiary of the French Technicolor SA, before it moved production of electronic products to China.
Three years after its takeover, Thomson found severe pollution at the Taoyuan factory and as a result shut it down the following year, but by then some of its 20,000 workers had been diagnosed with cancer.
In 1998, a group of workers who fell victim to industrial pollution organized the self-help association to seek compensation through legal channels, triggering years of lawsuits involving nearly 2,000 plaintiffs.
In a separate class lawsuit against RCA and the other companies, the Supreme Court on March 11 upheld a decision made by the high court to award NT$54.7 million in compensation to 24 former RCA workers while ordering a retrial of the case involving 222 other plaintiffs by the Taiwan High Court.
Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel