The Senate is mulling over the passage of remedial legislation updating the 1949-era Civil Code’s provision raising the minimum amount of damages for wrongful death caused by negligence or crime from P3,000 to P300,000.
In filing Senate Bill 1276, Minority Leader Franklin M. Drilon cited the need to amend the Code to increase the indemnity provided under the old law. The bill also seeks to raise the minimum amount for moral and exemplary damages to P200,000.
Drilon noted the Civil Code’s Article 2216 does not provide a minimum amount for moral and exemplary damages, and leaves it entirely to the discretion of the courts. Jurisprudence similarly pegs the amount at P100,000, he added.
A former justice secretary, he clarified that moral damages are awarded to compensate for physical suffering, mental anguish, serious anxiety, besmirched reputation, wounded feelings and social humiliation. Exemplary damages are imposed by way of example, or correction, for highly outrageous or reprehensible conduct and to vindicate undue suffering.
The minority leader pointed out that while the old Civil Code set the amount for death indemnity to P3,000, the amount has increased in jurisprudence over time to P50,000 in 1990. The amount remained stagnant, however, at P50,000 until 2013 when the Supreme Court, in People of the Philippines v. Manuel Gambao, raised the minimum amount to P100,000.
“While it is clear from the wording of the law and the decisions rendered by the Supreme Court that the amount provided is only the minimum,” he noted that “it has become common practice for our courts to award death indemnity, as well as moral and exemplary damages, only within the minimum amount.”
At the same time, Drilon deplored that “the gruesome nature of deaths subject of recently decided cases would have warranted a higher award, but that courts have been hesitant to depart from the amounts fixed by jurisprudence.”
For instance, he cited the recent decision on the Maguindanao massacre case where the court only granted compensation payout of P100,000 for death indemnity, P100,000 for moral damages and P100,000 for exemplary damages.
“We are proposing these amendments to emphasize that the amounts provided in the law are only the minimum, and that the courts are empowered to use their discretion in granting a higher amount, based on the rate of inflation and circumstances unique to the case,” said Drilon, adding that “without saying that human life, or human suffering, has an equivalent price or cost, the indemnity for death should be at least P300,000.”
Moreover, Drilon recalled the Court’s decision in People of the Philippines v. Mariano Oandasan Jr., quoting the ruling that “there can be no sufficient reparation or indemnification for loss of a human life, which has immeasurable value. However, civil indemnity for death is compensatory in nature and must be adjusted to existing economic realities, otherwise, the objective to justly indemnify the victims will be rendered meaningless.”
Image credits: Public Relation and Information Bureau – Public Relation and Information Bureau, Senate of the Philippines