18 Sep 17 Punitive Damages: Argentine Justice increases the amounts awarded

By Matias Ferrari and Micaela Luciani

We will hereby outline some of the most relevant cases of punitive damages of recent times. Argentine Justice has increased the civil fines established under section 52 bis of Law no. 24,240 due to serious misconducts of companies.
We highlight the most important cases -by the amount awarded- divided by the industry involved:

•  Consumer goods: in July 2017, a Tucuman court imposed an AR$ 500,000 fine against a company because an alkaline battery was found inside a bottle of soda (case “Esteban, Noelia Estefanía vs. Cervecería y Maltería Quilmes SAICAG «).
•  Mobile phone services: a Cordoba court sentenced a company to pay an AR$ 280,000 fine for charging calls to free numbers and avoiding proper response to a customer (case «Raspanti, Sebastián with AMX Argentina SA» of 2015).

In other case from 2016, a Salta court admitted a claim filed by a customer for charging trivias and content subscriptions without the consent of the user. As a result, an AR$ 200,000 fine was decided (case «S. S. L. v. Telecom Personal S.A.»).

• Banking entities: in Bahía Blanca, a petition for punitive damages of AR$ 150,000 against a bank was admitted because it provided wrong financial information to the bank regulator regarding the plaintiff («Peri, Daniel Alberto», case of 2017).

These precedents, together with other sentenced fines between AR$ 20,000 and AR$ 50,000 highlight a tendency in our courts to increase the amount judicially awarded for punitive damages. It should be kept in mind that until 2014 the average amount for this fine throughout the country barely exceeded AR$ 10.000.
In short, until 2015 it was exceptional to find a judgment in this respect for more than AR$ 50,000. In recent times, we have noticed a significant increase in the sentenced amounts for punitive damages and we believe that this tendency will continue accentuating in the future.