The Superior Court of Justice (STJ) released 11 theses consolidated in the court on civil liability for moral damages. The understandings are in edition 125 of Case Law in Theses.
The court’s Case Law Secretariat highlighted two precedents. The first establishes that setting the amount due as compensation for moral damages must consider the two-phase method, which combines the criteria of the valuation of the circumstances of the case and of the legal interest harmed, and minimizes any arbitrariness in adopting criteria that are solely subjective to the judge, in addition to ruling out any capping of the damage.
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The other thesis establishes that, although the moral violation affects only the subjective rights of the deceased, the estate and the heirs have standing to claim compensation for the moral damages suffered by him.
Civil liability for moral damages – learn the 11 theses
- Setting the amount due as compensation for moral damages must consider the two-phase method, which combines the criteria of the valuation of the circumstances of the case and of the legal interest harmed, and minimizes any arbitrariness when adopting criteria that are solely subjective to the judge, in addition to ruling out any capping of the damage.
- Collective moral damage, ascertainable in re ipsa, is an autonomous category of damage related to the unjust and intolerable violation of fundamental values of the collectivity.
- The cumulation of compensation for aesthetic damage and moral damage is lawful (Precedent 387/STJ).
- Standing to claim compensation for moral damages belongs, as a rule, to the offended party itself; however, in certain situations, those persons who, being very close affectively to the victim, are indirectly affected by the harmful event are also co-entitled, recognizing, in such cases, the so-called reflex or ricochet moral damage.
- Although the moral violation affects only the subjective rights of the deceased, the estate and the heirs have active standing ad causam to claim compensation for the moral damages suffered by the de cujus.
- The successors have standing to file an action for compensation for moral damages arising from persecution, torture, and imprisonment suffered during the era of the military regime.
- Affective abandonment of a child, as a rule, does not generate compensable moral damages, but, in exceptional hypotheses, if the occurrence of a civil wrong that surpasses mere displeasure is proven, the existence of the duty to indemnify may be recognized.
- There is no liability for moral damages arising from affective abandonment before the recognition of paternity.
- The limitation period for the reparatory claim of affective abandonment begins to run from the majority of the plaintiff.
- A legal entity may suffer moral damage, provided that an offense to its objective honor is demonstrated.
- A legal entity governed by public law is not the holder of a right to compensation for moral damage related to an offense to its honor or image, since, being a fundamental right, its immediate holder is the private individual, and recognizing this right to the State leads to the subversion of the natural order of fundamental rights.
Sources: Conjur and Press Office of the STJ
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