The Nagoya District Court on Friday ordered Aichi Prefecture along with other parties to pay roughly 34 million yen in compensation to the family of a women who died as a result of being over-medicated with an experimental drug.
The family claims the housewife died in 1988 from an overdose of an experimental cancer drug at the prefecture-run Aichi Cancer Center.
The case was filed by the three members of Yoshiko Sato's family, including her husband Masaru, 62. Masaru also claimed that doctors at the center used the test drug without acquiring the necessary consent from his wife.
In handing down the ruling, Judge Katsuo Takahashi said that the court found no evidence that the center provided the necessary information nor acquired consent from Sato before she received the medication.
He also said that the action on the part of the doctors caused Sato's death.
Friday's judgment is the first judicial decision over issues related to informed consent between doctors and patients in administering medicines that are in an experimental stage, the plaintiffs' lawyers said.
The Health and Welfare Ministry has recommended that doctors provide sufficient information to, and acquire consent from patients when administering experimental drugs.
According to the complaint, Sato was admitted to Aichi Cancer Center in Nagoya's Chikusa Ward in May 1988 to receive treatment for ovarian cancer, but died in September the same year at the age of 45.
She was being treated with the test drug until the month of her death. She was told by her doctor that her cancerous growth needed to shrink through the use of the medication before she would be able to undergo surgery.