Nintendo ordered to pay 200,000 yen after court decides doctor carried out power harassment

According to a report from Mainichi, Nintendo was recently ordered to pay 200,000 yen (roughly $1,300) in damages after a court found that an industrial doctor at the company carried out power harassment against two temporary nurses.

The site reports that the nurses filed their initial lawsuit after “claiming that they were unfairly denied employment because their relationship with their boss had deteriorated, even though they had been subjected to power harassment by him.” They were originally sent to Nintendo via a program intended to lead to full employment. After starting work at Nintendo’s human resources department in April 2018, the nurses’ responsibilities included checkups and other duties. However, after five months, the company informed the temporary staffing agency that dispatched the nurses that it would not employ them on a regular basis because they had “failed to establish a smooth cooperative framework with the physician.”

While acknowledging the power harassment, the district court did not believe that their regular employment was unfairly denied. This is because Nintendo’s refusal was “not unreasonable.”

At the same time, the court did say that the industrial doctor ignored the plaintiffs at work. Since the doctor said to the nurses that he’d provide instructions by email and never greeted them, that constituted power harassment. Furthermore, it was determined that Nintendo was liable as an employer.

Finally, the court highlighted that the nurses’ case is different from “termination of employment” of a contract employee given how no labor contract is signed as part of the program. Ultimately, “the expectations (for regular employment) are not protected in the same way as in cases over the termination of a labor contract.”