The operator of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant said Thursday it will accept a court order to pay damages to the family of a 102-year-old man who killed himself in the face of an evacuation order amid the 2011 nuclear crisis.

"We decided not to appeal the ruling, looking into its content and other factors in a comprehensive manner," Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. said, referring to a decision handed down by the Fukushima District Court on Feb. 20 that ordered the payment of 15.2 million yen ($142,000) in compensation to the family of Fumio Okubo.

The family members who filed the lawsuit said they also have no intention of appealing the ruling to a higher court, leading it to be finalized. They had sought a total of about 60 million yen from the utility known as Tepco.

"I'm relieved to hear that the ruling will not be challenged. Grandpa must also be rejoicing with us," said Mieko Okubo, one of the three plaintiffs and the 65-year-old wife of Okubo's second-eldest son. "I want Tepco to come to apologize," she added.

In a series of lawsuits filed over suicides linked to the Fukushima crisis, three rulings have been issued so far and Tepco has been ordered to pay compensation in all of them. Okubo's case was different from the two others in that his suicide took place before the evacuation.

According to the ruling, Okubo, who had never lived outside of his hometown Iitate in Fukushima Prefecture, was found to have hanged himself in his home on April 12, 2011, a day after learning the government was set to issue the evacuation order to the village.

The district court recognized a causal relationship between the suicide and the nuclear disaster, with Presiding Judge Hideki Kanazawa pointing to the "unbearable pain" the old man must have suffered when thinking about leaving his home and meeting his end without returning there.

After a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and subsequent tsunami struck the Fukushima Daiichi complex in northeastern Japan on March 11, 2011, the plant suffered multiple meltdowns in the world's worst nuclear catastrophe since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, prompting the government to instruct neighboring residents to evacuate.

Iitate village, located about 30 to 50 kilometers northwest of the plant, was designated as an evacuation zone on April 22, 2011. The order was lifted in most parts of the village last March following radiation cleanup work.