Taipei, April 29 (CNA) A class-action lawsuit, brought by residents of a housing complex that collapsed during a 2016 earthquake in Tainan, was thrown out Thursday by the city's district court.
In its ruling, the Tainan District Court said it had seen no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the city's public works department, which had issued the licenses for construction of the Weiguan Jinlong residential building.
The 16-story complex, which was located in Tainan's Yongkang District, collapsed during a magnitude 6.4 earthquake that struck southern Taiwan on Feb. 6, 2016, killing 117 people and injuring 504.
After the tragedy, 29 Weiguan Jinlong residents who survived the quake brought a lawsuit against the Tainan public works department, seeking damages of NT$278.9 million (US$9.9 million).
The court rejected the suit, however, saying that the public works department was not at fault, either in the area of issuing the building licenses or conducting inspections during the construction of the building complex, as argued by the plaintiffs.
It was one of six civil lawsuits brought before the courts in connection with the collapse of the building, in which all but two of the total earthquake deaths occurred and the injured numbered 104.
To date, a total of NT$1.22 billion has been awarded in three of the cases brought against individuals and companies.
In a criminal case in November 2016, Lin Ming-hui (林明輝), the owner of the now-defunct Weiguan Corp. that had built the housing complex in 1993, and four other defendants were found guilty of negligent homicide and each sentenced to five years in prison.
The five defendants were deemed responsible for the poor design and construction of the building and for the use of inferior materials to cut costs. As a result, the building could not sustain the impact of the quake and collapsed, leading to heavy casualties, the court said in its ruling.
