Court calculates dead, disabled girl’s earnings at 85% of average

OSAKA--The Osaka District Court on Feb. 27 reduced the compensation amount awarded to the parents of a girl who was killed in an accident because she had a hearing disorder.

The court ordered the driver whose car hit and killed Ayuka Ide, 11, in Osaka’s Ikuno Ward in 2018 to pay about 37.7 million yen ($277,000) in compensation to her parents.

The compensation amount was considered what Ayuka would have earned in her lifetime.

However, Presiding Judge Mika Takeda calculated Ayuka’s earnings to be 85 percent of the average lifetime pay because her salary would likely have been smaller because of her disability.

Her parents were seeking about 61.3 million yen in compensation from the driver.

Ayuka was a student at a school for hearing-impaired children when she died.

Her parents argued in court that her estimated lost earnings should be based on the average wage of all workers.

They said Ayuka could communicate with a hearing aid. If she had reached the working age, she would have been able to work like anyone else because the work environment for people with hearing disorders is expected to improve through advanced technology, such as voice-recognition apps, they said.

But defense lawyers said Ayuka’s estimated lost earnings should be based on the average wage for people with hearing disorders, which is 60 percent of the level for non-disabled workers.

Ayuka’s parents argued, “Regardless of disabilities, every child has a future possibility.”

They urged the court to make “a good precedent-setting decision.”

Past rulings on the issue have said disabled children “would not have been able to work in the same way as non-disabled workers.” The lost earnings from the deaths of disabled children have consistently been lower than those without disabilities.

When estimating the lost earnings of children with disabilities, courts take into account the degree of the disability, their ability to communicate, their academic ability, academic background, employment opportunities for their school’s graduates, and other issues.