A South Korean district court has dismissed the largest ever wartime labor compensation lawsuit targeting 16 Japanese companies, including Nippon Steel Corp. and Mitsubishi Materials Corp.

The Seoul Central District Court said on Monday the case was not even sufficient to proceed with a hearing, and gave what is tantamount to a dismissal and a loss for the 85 plaintiffs in the case. The plaintiffs and their legal representatives told reporters outside the courthouse that they would immediately file an appeal.

The court, which had initially scheduled to issue its statement regarding the proceedings on Thursday, notified parties earlier Monday that the date had been moved up.

The case was the largest wartime compensation suit against Japanese companies to date, and seemingly contradicts the previous ruling by the Korean Supreme Court in October 2018, which ordered Nippon Steel to pay 100 million won(USD$88,000) each to Korean victims of Japanese forced labor during World War Two. The court made a similar ruling in November 2018 against Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.

The Japanese government asserted that the 2018 ruling was in violation of the 1965 Agreement on the Settlement of Problem concerning Property and Claims and on Economic Co-operation between Japan and the Republic of Korea, which left the issue of the right to claim between both countries “settled completely and final.”