In recent years, courts have been increasingly occupied with cases of material damage and personal injury caused by extreme natural phenomena (wildfires, floods, snowstorms), as questions frequently arise as to the determination of the liability of public bodies. Where the loss-causing events are linked with acts or omissions of central administration or its regional bodies, the law provides for the attribution of the relevant liability and the award of reasonable compensation, both for material damage and for moral harm.
As regards moral harm, the amount of compensation in each case is determined by the court on the basis of the principle of proportionality – that is, in a manner that ensures a fair balance between the competing interests, for the effective protection of the fundamental rights on each side. This means that the type or means of judicial coercion and the legal consequences thereof, in favour of the claimant or against the obliged party, must be:
(a) appropriate – that is, fully suited to achieve the objective pursued;
(b) necessary – that is, measured in relation to other available means of judicial coercion, in a way that produces the least possible restriction of the rights of the party against whom they are pronounced; and
(c) proportionate – that is, in an acceptable relationship to the objective pursued, so that the benefit conferred on the claimant is not less than the harm caused to the obliged party.
The trial court’s search for the amount which, in a specific case, is to be regarded as “reasonable” as monetary satisfaction for the moral harm of a particular claimant is conducted by weighing a series of circumstances which, without the parties needing to invoke them one by one, emerge from the totality of the evidence they rely upon and produce. Such circumstances are principally and indicatively the type and gravity of the moral injury; the personal, social and financial situation of the parties; the gravity of the wrongdoer’s fault (to the extent that it affects the intensity of the claimant’s moral harm); the gravity of any contributory fault of the victim (which operates differently in monetary satisfaction than in claims for restoration of patrimonial damage, cf. Plenary Supreme Court judgment 1115/1986); the specific circumstances of the wrongful act, and so on.
It follows from the above that the lawyer plays a decisive role in fully presenting the facts and in collecting and producing evidence, so that the court is able to assess accurately both the extent of the harm and, consequently, the corresponding compensation.