This case has been cited 3 times or more.
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2012-08-23 |
BERSAMIN, J. |
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| There was also no clear and distinct statement of the factual and legal support for the award of moral damages in the substantial amount of P10,000,000.00. The award was thus also speculative and whimsical. Like the actual damages, the moral damages constituted another judicial ipse dixit, the inevitable consequence of which was to render the award of moral damages incapable of attaining finality. In addition, the grant of moral damages in that manner contravened the law that permitted the recovery of moral damages as the means to assuage "physical suffering, mental anguish, fright, serious anxiety, besmirched reputation, wounded feelings, moral shock, social humiliation, and similar injury."[111] The contravention of the law was manifest considering that Stern Builders, as an artificial person, was incapable of experiencing pain and moral sufferings.[112] Assuming that in granting the substantial amount of P10,000,000.00 as moral damages, the RTC might have had in mind that dela Cruz had himself suffered mental anguish and anxiety. If that was the case, then the RTC obviously disregarded his separate and distinct personality from that of Stern Builders.[113] Moreover, his moral and emotional sufferings as the President of Stern Builders were not the sufferings of Stern Builders. Lastly, the RTC violated the basic principle that moral damages were not intended to enrich the plaintiff at the expense of the defendant, but to restore the plaintiff to his status quo ante as much as possible. Taken together, therefore, all these considerations exposed the substantial amount of P10,000,000.00 allowed as moral damages not only to be factually baseless and legally indefensible, but also to be unconscionable, inequitable and unreasonable. | |||||
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2012-01-18 |
VILLARAMA, JR., J. |
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| Finally, we hold that the trial court correctly dismissed petitioner's counterclaim for moral damages and attorney's fees. The filing alone of a civil action should not be a ground for an award of moral damages in the same way that a clearly unfounded civil action is not among the grounds for moral damages.[27] Besides, a juridical person is generally not entitled to moral damages because, unlike a natural person, it cannot experience physical suffering or such sentiments as wounded feelings, serious anxiety, mental anguish or moral shock.[28] Although in some recent cases we have held that the Court may allow the grant of moral damages to corporations, it is not automatically granted; there must still be proof of the existence of the factual basis of the damage and its causal relation to the defendant's acts. This is so because moral damages, though incapable of pecuniary estimation, are in the category of an award designed to compensate the claimant for actual injury suffered and not to impose a penalty on the wrongdoer.[29] There is no evidence presented to establish the factual basis of petitioner's claim for moral damages. | |||||
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2009-05-08 |
BRION, J. |
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| Assuming arguendo that the petitioner's case lacked merit, the award of moral damages is not a legal consequence that automatically followed. Moral damages are only awarded if the basis therefor, as provided in the law quoted above, is duly established. In the present case, the ground the respondents invoked and failed to establish is malicious prosecution. Crystal v. Bank of the Philippine Islands[13] is instructive on this point, as it tells us that the law never intended to impose a penalty on the right to litigate so that the filing of an unfounded suit does not automatically entitle the defendant to moral damages:The spouses' complaint against BPI proved to be unfounded, but it does not automatically entitle BPI to moral damages. Although the institution of a clearly unfounded civil suit can at times be a legal justification for an award of attorney's fees, such filing, however, has almost invariably been held not to be a ground for an award of moral damages. The rationale for the rule is that the law could not have meant to impose a penalty on the right to litigate. Otherwise, moral damages must every time be awarded in favor of the prevailing defendant against an unsuccessful plaintiff. Given this conclusion, we find it unnecessary to rule on whether the respondents indeed suffered injuries for which they should be awarded moral damages. | |||||