The Tokyo District Court on Tuesday turned down a damages suit brought by a couple whose 4-year-old son died in 1999 after a doctor overlooked a 7.6-cm broken chopstick section lodged in his brain following a fall.
The court concluded the child would have probably died even if he had been properly checked and operated on.
Shunzo Sugino, who fell at a community summer festival in Suginami Ward, Tokyo, while eating cotton candy off the wooden chopstick, died the following morning after being released from Kyorin University Hospital.