TOKYO – The Tokyo High Court has overturned a lower court ruling and ordered The Asahi Shimbun to pay 3.3 million yen (about $31,000) in damages to The Yomiuri Giants after ruling that articles printed by the newspaper about player contracts amounted to slander of the pro baseball club.

In the ruling handed down Wednesday by presiding Judge Izumi Takizawa, the court said the articles were not accurate.

In the top story on the front page of its morning edition on March 15, 2012, The Asahi Shimbun reported the Giants had signed six players from 1997 to 2004 on contracts worth a total of 3.6 billion yen (about $33.8 million). Given that the common consent in the pro baseball world at that time was that the maximum amount for such a contract was 150 million yen, the Asahi claimed the Giants had breached the salary limit by 2.7 billion yen. The Asahi’s morning edition the following day ran a bylined article by a senior writer with a headline and content that suggested continued wrongdoing on the part of the Giants.

The Tokyo District Court ruled the payment of additional incentives to players if they achieved certain performance levels could be broadly considered as part of the contract, so the article’s claim that a total of 3.6 billion yen was paid as contract money “was true.” However, the high court ruled these additional payments were “institutionalized versions of incentives introduced by the baseball world in 2001” and “of a different nature” from money paid under a contract. The court accepted the Giants’ position and ruled the article “was not accurate.”

The high court also pointed out that the article mentioned these contracts “were actions that could receive a severe warning from Nippon Professional Baseball,” the body governing professional baseball in Japan. On this point, the high court decided the article “was not true” because “how the Giants handled the matter was different from what other baseball clubs did to incur punishment over contract payments and there was no possibility of the Giants being penalized.”

Furthermore, the Asahi reporter did not interview NPB officials on this matter and wrote the original article while misunderstanding the facts. As a result, the high court concluded this article, combined with the article by the senior writer, slandered the reputation of the Giants club.

However, the high court said the article’s statement that the additional incentive payments were part of the contract money “should not be considered a mistake as such,” because it was common practice for Giants’ internal documents to contain a total figure without differentiating the two elements.

A representative from the public relations section of the The Asahi Shimbun said the daily would immediately make procedures for a final appeal.

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