In a case decided on appeal, the High Court of Cassation and Justice ruled in principle that the case law criterion is a guiding criterion, which is neither unique nor absolute, to which the criterion of quantification of the damage is necessarily added, taking into account all the specific circumstances of each case.
Thus, the Supreme Court states that when a party is ordered to pay sums of money as moral damages, a balance must be maintained: such sums of money must be reasonable, their assessment and quantification must be fair and equitable, they must correspond to the real and actual moral damage, so that they do not result in the unjust enrichment of the person entitled to claim and receive moral damages, and they also must not be insignificant.
The Court clarified that there are no legal criteria for determining the amount of moral damage, so that the courts must refer to the particular aspects of the case concerning the negative consequences suffered by the person concerned, physically and mentally, the importance of the values damaged, the extent to which these values were damaged, the intensity with which the consequences of the damage were perceived, all these criteria being subject to the connotation of reasonable assessment, on a fair basis, corresponding to the real and actual damage caused.
In relation to these aspects, the HCCJ also defined the general role of these amounts awarded by the courts, which cannot make reparation for irreparable damage but can only provide satisfactory compensation to the victim in order to alleviate the suffering incurred which, even if it cannot be quantified, can nevertheless be compensated by the award of damages.