Appeal by ex-M'bishi officials over fatal accident rejected

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TOKYO, Feb. 2 Kyodo -
The Tokyo High Court upheld suspended prison sentences Monday for two former
Mitsubishi Motors Corp. senior officials over a 2002 fatal wheel-separation
accident in Yokohama that killed a woman and injured her two sons.
Dismissing an appeal from Hiroshi Murakawa, 62, and Hirotoshi Miki, 60,
Presiding Judge Kunio Harada said the defendants ''did not recall (the vehicle)
and left it in danger of causing an accident even though it was suspected that
the strength of the hubs connecting the wheels and axles was poor.''
Murakawa, former head of the automaker's quality control department, and Miki,
former group leader in the department, were both sentenced to 18 months in
prison, suspended for three years, by the Yokohama District Court in December
2007 for neglecting to take action to prevent the accident.
''If the defendants had recalled the vehicle, the accident could have been
prevented,'' the judge said.
In the accident in Yokohama's Seya Ward on Jan. 10, 2002, 29-year-old Shiho
Okamoto was killed and her two sons, then 4 and 1, were injured when they were
hit by a wheel that had come off a large trailer truck made by Mitsubishi
Motors.
The front wheel, which measured 1 meter in diameter and weighed about 140
kilograms, rolled about 500 meters along a slope before hitting the victims.
On Monday, the high court pointed to the inaction by Murakawa and Miki after a
1999 incident in which a similar hub defect was believed to have caused an
expressway bus wheel to drop off in Hiroshima Prefecture.
The defense counsel had appealed the district court ruling, arguing there was
no scientific evidence supporting the alleged weakness of the hub at the time
and neither man was in a position to order a product recall.
==Kyodo
2009-02-02 22:49:13