ABSTRACT
This article analyzes, from both a doctrinal and jurisprudential perspective, the category of harm to social life within contemporary civil liability. In contrast to the old, purely patrimonial paradigm, this research addresses the evolution of non-material damages, highlighting the autonomy of relational harm from traditional moral damages. While the latter compensates for internal affliction or pain, harm to social life compensates for the serious disruption of social dynamics and the individual’s external daily life. Furthermore, the article critically examines the intense debate generated by the administrative courts in legal systems such as Colombia’s, which decided to subsume this concept within the broader category of harm to health based on assessments of loss of earning capacity. Through a comparison of these positions, the article concludes that this inference fosters an unacceptable objectification of the victim and unjustifiably excludes indirect victims (third-party caregivers) from their inalienable right to compensation. Consequently, the urgency of maintaining the legal autonomy of the damage to the life of relationship is defended as an inalienable imperative to guarantee the conventional and constitutional principle of integral reparation.
Martinez Lazcano and Alfonso Jaime, Damage To Social Life as an Autonomous Loss in Contemporary Civil Liability (August 28, 2016).
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