Institute for Migrant Rights
Railway line at Cianjur station, c. 1890 · KITLV, CC BY 4.0

Migration Jurisprudence from the South › Japan

Lost earnings of an injured worker without a visa

Supreme Court of Japan · Japan · 1997-01-28 · National court

Citation: Heisei 5 (O) No. 2132
Type of case: Private
Outcome: Decided for the migrant side

Question

How should damages for lost earnings be calculated for an injured foreign worker who was in Japan without status?

What the court decided

On Japanese wages for the period he could expect to stay, then on wages in his home country.

In plain language

A Pakistani worker without a visa was injured in a Japanese factory. The Supreme Court said the employer must pay damages, counting Japanese wages for a limited time and home-country wages after that.

Dalam bahasa sederhana

Seorang pekerja Pakistan tanpa visa terluka di pabrik di Jepang. MA menyatakan majikan wajib membayar ganti rugi, menghitung upah Jepang untuk jangka terbatas lalu upah negara asal sesudahnya.

Pertanyaan: Bagaimana ganti rugi kehilangan penghasilan dihitung bagi pekerja asing tanpa izin yang terluka?

What happened afterwards

  • 1997-01-28: Judgment.

Sources

Open this decision in the interactive collection (compare, filter, Indonesian view, downloads).

Cite as: Institute for Migrant Rights (2026), Migration Jurisprudence from the South, version 0.1, https://theimr.org/court-decisions/d/jp-lost-earnings-1997/. This page summarizes a court decision for research and advocacy; it is not legal advice.

For researchers

This collection of decisions is built for empirical legal scholarship and socio-legal research on migration and the rights of migrant workers, as well as for advocacy.

The coded variables support statistical analysis in law: cross-national comparison, regression and event-history designs, and law and economics questions such as how recruitment fees, wage protection and limits on changing employer affect migrant workers. The data can be downloaded for replication.

Keywords: case law; jurisprudence; judicial decisions; comparative constitutional law; courts and migration; judicial behavior; litigation outcomes; refugee law; non-refoulement; citizenship and nationality; empirical legal studies; empirical legal scholarship; quantitative legal research; statistical analysis in law; law and economics; law and economics of migration; comparative law; socio-legal studies; legal pluralism; migration law; labor migration; migrant workers’ rights; human rights law; access to justice; Global South; Asia; Africa; Middle East; Latin America; Indonesia; open data; replication data.