A woman in Japan has been ordered to pay a man more than £700 in compensation after having sex with his wife.
In a ruling dated 16 February, the Tokyo District Court ordered the unnamed woman, 37, to pay 110,000 yen ($1,000/£700) to the husband of a woman she'd had sex with.
According to The Asahi Shimbun, the 39-year-old husband had filed a lawsuit against his 35-year-old wife's lover, accusing her of engaging in sexual conduct after meeting online.
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The accused argued that what happened between her and the wife did not constitute infidelity under the law, as their actions hadn't ruined the marriage.
However, the court ruled that an act undermining the peace in marriage does constitute infidelity, ordering the woman to pay compensation to the husband.
Japanese courts are starting to move towards recognising that adultery is not limited to acts between members of the opposite sex.
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Recently, a district court also ruled that not allowing same-sex couples to marry is 'unconstitutional'.
Japan's constitution still defines marriage as being based on 'the mutual consent of both sexes', but in a landmark ruling, the Sapporo District Court found that the country's failure to recognise same-sex marriage is unconstitutional.
The ruling said: "Sexual orientation cannot be changed or selected by a person's will.
"It is discriminatory treatment [...] that they cannot receive even some of the legal benefits that heterosexuals do."
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Masa Yanagisawa, head of Prime Services at Goldman Sachs Japan and a board member of the NGO Marriage for All Japan, said: "For things that are part of the national system, such as pensions, there's nothing they can do.
"All the other advanced countries have this, so Japan will lose out competitively. Then there's the fact that people can't be who they are. It becomes quite business critical."
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The court dismissed a request for compensation from the three couples who brought the case, who had asked for the government to pay them 1 million yen ($9,200/£6,600) each in damages, in acknowledgement of the pain and injustice they suffered by not being able to marry.
Takeharu Kato, the lawyer of the plaintiffs, said the verdict overall was 'revolutionary', urging parliament to start working on a law to make same-sex marriage possible as soon as possible.
The lawyer told a news conference: "We praise this ruling for taking in the plaintiffs' earnest appeals."
One of the plaintiffs, a woman known only as 'E', said: "Only because the gender of the person we love is different, we can't get married. We live the same lives as heterosexuals, have the same troubles and the same joys.
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"Though our lives are exactly the same, the nation wouldn't recognise this."
Featured Image Credit: PATopics: World News, News, Relationships, Japan