On 14 October 2004, a suit filed by 45 plaintiffs against the Japanese state and Kumamoto prefecture was successful in the Supreme Court in Osaka. The case concerned the mass poisoning almost half a century ago of residents of the town of Minamata in Western Japan, when mercury contained in effluent from the Chisso Corporation's factory contaminated the Shiranui Sea and then accumulated in the bodies of those who ate its fish and shellfish. The Supreme Court found the national and prefectural government authorities responsible for administrative malfeasance. The status of the plaintiffs as Minamata sufferers, till then persistently denied by the authorities, was upheld, and compensation was ordered. This was an action launched in 1982, preceded by a long and anguished course on the path of the plaintiffs, and in the twenty-two years that has passed since the suit was launched twenty-three of the fifty-nine died (the bereaved families of fifteen of them persisting in the action), and the average age of the survivors came to be over seventy. The authorities, responsible for protecting the rights and health of the people, had caused these citizens continuous pain by denying them their just rights.