Sapporo High Court rules hotel stopping manager from attending daughter’s wedding unlawful

SAPPORO — The high court here has ruled that it was illegal for the Keio Plaza Hotel Sapporo to deny its now former accommodations manager permission to attend their daughter’s wedding in Hawaii over COVID-19 concerns.

The Sept. 13 decision awarding the plaintiff 330,000 yen (about $2,350) in compensation overturned a lower court decision dismissing their case. The former manager had sought 3.3 million yen in damages.

According to the ruling, in February 2020, the plaintiff applied for eight days of paid leave starting on March 18 to attend his daughter’s wedding. Although the company president initially approved the leave, on March 17, the president forbade the former manager to travel, preventing them from attending the ceremony.

The Sapporo District Court had ruled in favor of the hotel and deemed the president’s order reasonable, stating that, had the former manager contracted the coronavirus and the infection been reported, it could have damaged the hotel’s reputation and potentially impacted its business operations. However, the Sapporo High Court found that, while the travel risks could have been recognized by mid-March at the latest, the company’s decision to invoke its “right to change the timing of leave” on the day before the plaintiff was to leave constituted an illegal abuse of that right.

A Keio Plaza Hotel Sapporo representative commented, “We will thoroughly review the content of the ruling and consider our response.”

(Japanese original by Haruka Ito, Hokkaido News Department)