Is the amount of recovery included in the amount of the claim under the law?
Important! Based on the provisions of Article 91 of the Code of Civil Procedure, the amount of compensation is determined according to the statement of claim for the recovery of funds. The cost of the claim directly depends on the amount recovered. A similar rule follows from Article 103 of the Arbitration Procedural Code of the Russian Federation.
However, the cost of the claim does not include compensation for moral damage. The cost of the claim is indicated separately, the amount of compensation – separately. In addition, a separate paragraph in the statement of claim should indicate the requirement to recover your legal costs from the defendant.
Amount of compensation
The current legislation of the Russian Federation has not established the maximum allowable amount of compensation for moral damage caused. This clearly follows from the provisions of Article 151 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation. In accordance with it, a citizen who has suffered moral harm independently determines the amount of compensation in monetary terms.
And the court to which he will file a claim for compensation for moral damage caused will consider the question of how much the amount of compensation corresponds to the degree of moral damage caused to the citizen.
How to correctly draw up a claim for compensation for moral damages
Although the current legislation of the Russian Federation has not established strict requirements for the form of a statement of claim for the recovery of moral damages, there are certain recommendations on what form this document should have and what information it should contain.
It should begin with a section that is commonly called the “header of the document.” It is written in the upper right corner of the sheet. This section contains the full name of the court to which your claim will be filed.
As the plaintiff's data, please indicate your last name, first name and patronymic, registration address and permanent residence address, if it does not coincide with the registration address, information about your identification document, and a telephone number at which you can be contacted. About the defendant, provide the same information as about the plaintiff, or at least all the part of it known to you.
After the header is completed, step back a little and write the name of the document in the center of the sheet - “Statement of Claim.”
Attention! Under the name of the document its main part is written. It is there that you provide as much detail and as briefly as possible information about what led to the violation of your legal rights and interests, for example, your health was harmed, you were insulted, or a family secret was disclosed, and so on.
Also list all the circumstances of what happened. State in detail what unlawful actions of the defendant led to your physical or mental harm.
In the next section, set out the requirements that the defendant must satisfy. After this comes a section that provides information about the cost of the claim being filed.
If you have made attempts to resolve the situation out of court, you must describe in detail what measures you took to achieve this and what results they led to.
Before you sign the statement of claim with your own handwritten signature, list all the materials and documents attached to it:
- Be sure to attach copies of it to the statement of claim (one for each party to the case), including the defendant and third parties;
- various evidence that confirms the legitimacy of the claims put forward by the plaintiff and the circumstances of the incident. Testimonies of witnesses to the incident, various documents, photo and video recording materials, independent expert data, and so on can be used as evidence;
- a financial document confirming that you have paid the state fee;
- if the plaintiff is represented by a lawyer or other legal representative, attach a duly certified copy of the power of attorney issued by the plaintiff to this person.
ATTENTION! View the completed sample claim for compensation for moral damage:
Statement of claim
The gradation of degrees of moral damage significantly affects the content of the claim. A deep justification for the claim will be necessary for claims for compensation for severe and extremely severe moral damage. To draw up statements of claim with such requirements, it will definitely be necessary to contact a lawyer.
Claims for minor and medium consequences can be drawn up independently, guided by the standard template available on the website. The standard scheme for filing a claim includes:
- names, surnames, patronymics and addresses of the plaintiff and defendant. If the defendant is a legal entity, then its full name and legal address shall be indicated;
- preamble, that is, a statement of the events leading to the claim in their sequence. For example, “On January 20, 2022, an agreement was concluded between me and the defendant for the renovation of my apartment,” etc.;
- the motivational part, that is, a description of the actual claims against the defendant and the justification for the moral damage caused to him. For example, “the repairs were carried out poorly, the ceiling collapsed within a week, I could not live in the apartment, and was forced to huddle in a closet in my mother-in-law’s apartment. All the days that I lived with her, she reproached me, called me stupid because I couldn’t do the repairs myself, but invited a hack, which caused me moral suffering, which I estimate at 10,000 rubles”;
- the operative part, which includes the requirements in their compressed form. For example, “I ask you to recover from the defendant the damage caused to me in the amount of 100,000 rubles, as well as legal expenses in the amount of 10,000 rubles”;
- a list of attached documents confirming the validity of the claims.
Evidence of damage in court
In order to receive compensation for the moral damage you have suffered, you will need to prove the existence of a direct cause-and-effect relationship between this damage and the suffering, physical or moral, that the unlawful actions of the defendant caused you, since, based on Article 151 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, this suffering causes that moral damage , for which you are seeking compensation.
To prove the defendant's guilt, you can use any means. Such evidence includes: testimony of witnesses, sentences and court decisions that have entered into force, explanations given by the parties, opinions of expert organizations, various material evidence, including written evidence.
There are many possibilities for describing the moral harm caused to you, and there are also many ways to prove it. But it should be noted that not all of them are recognized by the courts as indisputable. The most significant evidence confirming the infliction of moral damage is the long-term incapacity of the plaintiff or his disability, which resulted from the commission of an unlawful act by the defendant.
In this case, as evidence, you can use certificates received from various medical institutions where you were treated: emergency rooms, hospitals, hospitals, clinics, and so on. You can also provide an extract from the medical history, an examination report by doctors, or a conclusion from a forensic expert.
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Attention! It should be emphasized that the courts believe that the more significant damage to the plaintiff’s health was caused, the greater physical suffering he had to endure. Therefore, in order to prove that you suffered moral harm, you will need to prove during the trial that you had to experience severe physical pain due to the unlawful actions of the defendant.
Let us note that if there is a criminal prosecution of a person who has caused you certain suffering, then compensation for the moral damage caused to you will be recovered from him by force of law.
If moral damage was caused to you as a result of an insult, then as evidence you can use audio and video materials that record the moment of the insult, eyewitness testimony, and if you were insulted in writing, you should provide the court with written material containing it is an insult.
To substantiate your claims for compensation for moral damage, you can also provide the court with documents confirming the facts of your appeals to psychologists, psychiatrists and other specialists to whom you were forced to turn after the defendant committed an unlawful act against you.
If, as a result of the unlawful actions of the defendant, your personal or family secrets were disclosed, your honor and dignity or business reputation were discredited, as a result of which you cannot enjoy a full social life, this impossibility is also evidence.
Assessment of moral damage
There is no scale that can give a monetary value to moral suffering. A person can only evaluate his own suffering independently. But this does not mean that it is the subjective assessment that will form the basis for the court’s decision.
When collecting moral damages, the court proceeds from the maximum possible objectivity. As a result, the claims made by the plaintiffs are partially satisfied by the court, approximately within 50% of the declared amount.
If the claim is about extremely serious and grave suffering, then a joint psychological and psychiatric examination is appointed to confirm the claims.
When conducting an examination, experts are guided by the following indicators:
- depth of suffering;
- duration of suffering;
- consequences of moral harm for the individual.
When assessing minor and moderate moral damage, the court acts independently, considering the events and consequences in their totality. Because of this, we recommend that when formulating claims, they are overstated, leaving the court the opportunity to reduce the penalty without much damage to the plaintiff.
Classification of moral damage
Any illegal action, in addition to property damage, also causes moral damage. However, not every claim may be accompanied by an additional claim for compensation for moral injury.
In order for an ordinary offense against a partner in a legal relationship to turn into moral harm, its consequences must correspond to a number of qualifying criteria.
Thus, according to the consequences, moral injuries are conventionally divided into minor, moderate, severe and extremely severe.
- Minor effects include minor discomfort or short-term depression.
- The consequences of moral injury of moderate severity include emotional disorders over a long period that do not cause deviations in a person’s life.
- The consequences of severe moral injury include treatable mental disorders, regardless of their duration.
- An extremely severe degree of moral harm manifests itself in recurrent mental states or in the development of a mental illness that destroys a person’s personality.
The vast majority of claims for compensation for moral damages are caused by minor mental suffering and are based on the counterparty's violation of its contractual obligations, which led to nothing more than a spoiled mood.
Severe and moderate consequences can be caused, for example, by slander, disclosure of a secret or medical diagnosis, as well as criminal offenses and administrative offenses that significantly affected a person’s condition. For example, long-term phobia and depression that developed after an accident may provide grounds for qualifying moral damage as grave.
Extremely grave consequences in most cases develop from a crime committed against a person. Severe physical suffering, the death of a loved one, torture can lead to the development of irreversible mental changes and ultimately to the destruction of the individual.
As a rule, claims for such consequences are no longer brought by the victims themselves, but by their legal representatives or guardians.
Personal mental characteristics of a person cannot serve as a basis for determining moral harm.
For example, an exaggerated example would be a hypothetical case where a student commits suicide because a teacher graded his test incorrectly.
Of course, the teacher made a mistake for which he can be punished disciplinary action. It is possible that a teacher could be sued for damages if a student was not awarded a scholarship based on a poor grade.
But it is impossible for the student’s relatives to recover moral damages from the teacher, since the teacher’s actions do not correspond to the severity of the consequences. This means that we can only talk about the subjective inadequacy of the student’s behavior.
