Electric utilities’ secret recordings of court proceedings were aimed at collecting as much information as possible—including murmurs—for strategies to ensure victory in all lawsuits concerning nuclear energy, a company source said.
The source, an employee of one of the major power utilities, told The Asahi Shimbun that the recordings were hardly a secret in the industry, and that the companies also knew the practice violated Supreme Court rules.
“Everyone knew that recording was not allowed,” the employee said.
Several utilities and the Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan in May and June admitted to and apologized for secretly recording court proceedings involving nuclear-power lawsuits.
The Supreme Court, in principle, prohibits recording inside courtrooms because it could influence witnesses and others on the stand.
The companies have not disclosed what specifically they recorded in the nuclear-power lawsuits.
However, the employee and other sources indicated that everything possible was recorded.
The employee said a person inside the courtroom would use an IC recorder to collect every detail of the judge’s remarks, the plaintiffs’ and attorneys’ statements. Notes were also made about reactions and the atmosphere of the courtroom.
Reports of the court proceedings were emailed to federation officials and shared with each company via a mailing list that included legal affairs staff.
The recipients included Tokyo Electric Power Co. and J-Power, which are among the 13 entities in Japan with nuclear-related facilities.
The employee said the recordings were made exclusively for lawsuits involving nuclear energy.
“Nuclear-power lawsuits are crucial to management, and precise records are required,” the employee said. “The issues tend to be similar, so other companies’ records are extremely useful for strategy.”
CAPTURE ‘EVERY MURMUR AND LAUGH’
Lawsuits filed by residents and disaster victims to halt nuclear reactor operations or cancel installation permits surged after the triple meltdown at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in 2011.
The Asahi Shimbun obtained utilities’ litigation reports that were written by company personnel and federation staff. They were described as “detailed memos.”
In one report, the judge’s statements are recorded word for word, including “So that’s what happened,” “Um, then,” and “I see.”
It also noted a murmur from the plaintiffs, laughter in the court, and applause from the spectators.
The documents also describe physical actions in the courtroom.
Some reports included information on whether press photography was allowed before the hearings and on the number of reporters in the spectators’ seats.
BILLIONS ON THE LINE
The employee said the nuclear-power cases required extremely detailed documentation because of the high stakes involved.
Lawsuits and provisional measures seeking to halt reactor operations have been based mainly on assumptions about earthquakes, tsunami, counterterrorism measures and evacuation plans.
The utilities’ arguments are not always accepted.
Each company says restarting one reactor would improve annual earnings by up to about 100 billion yen ($618 million).
But if a reactor’s operation is blocked, the companies could be forced to pay several billions of yen a month to secure alternative fossil-fuel energy supplies.
Lawsuits against individual nuclear power plants often share the same issues and plaintiffs’ counsel.
In planning their responses, utilities refer to arguments and judges’ statements in similar cases. That is why the federation shared the reports among the companies, the employee said.
The reports aimed to “capture nuances between the lines” so responses could be prepared quickly, the employee said.
“The nuclear-power lawsuits require excessively detailed report creation, and we had no choice but to record,” the employee said. “If our supervisors and lawyers look at the reports, they can see that we would not have been able to prepare the notes without recordings. Recording was an understood, tacit rule within the company–and effectively coercive.”
A federation spokesperson said, “We deeply apologize for the unauthorized recordings by the federation and by the utilities.”
The spokesperson acknowledged that nuclear-related lawsuits share many similar issues, and the federation provides and shares such information.
“We do not know whether the materials provided by the companies were created from the unauthorized recordings,” the spokesperson said.
(This article was written by Yoshihiro Sakai and Wataru Netsu.)