The Tokyo District Court on May 11 found Mr. Toshihiro Kobayashi, former president of gas water heater maker Paloma Industries Ltd., and Mr. Wataru Kamatsuka, former chief quality control officer of the company, guilty of causing the death of an 18-year-old university student and the injury of his brother in a Minato Ward, Tokyo, apartment in November 2005 by carbon monoxide poisoning.

Although their sentences were suspended, the ruling is rare and significant. The company officials were found guilty of professional negligence resulting in death and injury, not because of product defects, but because of their failure to take sufficient safety measures to cope with maintenance service providers' prevalent practice of deliberately deactivating the safety devices of gas water heaters.

Seven types of Paloma gas water heaters sold in and after 1980 often failed to ignite. To ensure ignition, maintenance service providers deliberately deactivated the safety devices; deactivation led the heaters to operate with exhaust fans off.