Acknowledgement of loss of income for minors

Published 9 November 2017

The law has stated on multiple occasions that, when it comes to damages suffered by minors, there is no place for the recognition of loss of earnings due to possible income of the minor, given that they are eventual and could not be affirmed with certainty, that the child would have reached a productive life.

However, on the resolution issued on 29 March 2017, the Supreme Court of Justice completely turned around the decisions adopted in relation to the recognition of loss of future income of minors, and considered that it could no longer assume the same criteria adopted in previous decisions on the inadmissibility of granting the aforementioned compensation simply because the child was not earning a salary on the date of the occurrence of the harmful event.

The Court stated that a comprehensive compensation for damages does not seek to place the victim in the situation in which they were before the damage, but in the position in which they would have been "had the harmful or illegal act not occurred", a differentiation that allows the Court to make a hypothetical judgement about the probable future situation of the victim.

In this judgement, the Court held that the obligation of the State and society to protect the best interests of minors makes it necessary to award compensation for future loss of earnings based on the legal minimum wage, admitting that there is no now-better parameter for calculating such compensation.