Post by account_disabled on Mar 13, 2024 1:51:31 GMT -5
A lawyer who refers to the opposing party as a "contumacious debtor" does not violate personality rights. After all, this is a common expression inserted in generic, almost standardized pieces of consumerist demands that do not reflect the intention of violating anyone's subjective honor.
Therefore, the 9th Civil Chamber of the Court of Justice of Rio Grande do Sul maintained a sentence that denied moral damages to a woman who felt disrespected and morally attacked by the use of this expression by lawyers from the Chamber of Store Managers of Porto Alegre (CDL) .
The appeal's rapporteur, judge Eugênio Facchini Neto, said B2B Lead that the words spoken by CDL Porto Alegre's lawyers during the consumer action (in which the author won) do not have the "power of characterizing punishable excess". In his view, the use of the expression took place within the context of that action, in which it was discussed whether or not the author owed a debt to the store.
"As a matter of fact, then, what can be seen is that this action consists of a forced attempt by the author to undue occupation. And I say forced because, initially, the author, in order to justify the moral damage suffered for having been called as a persistent debtor, it even associates the defendant's conduct with one of the darkest and most serious periods ever experienced by this country - in which people were persecuted, tortured and killed by an authoritarian regime", he wrote in the vote. The ruling, with a unanimous decision, was issued at the session on April 22.
How it all started
The litigation is the result of an action filed by the author, in March 2016, against Lojas Renner and CDL Porto Alegre, filed under number 001/1.16.0027231-3 at the 17th Civil Court of the Central Court of Porto Alegre . In that demand, she complained that her name was unfairly removed from the CDL Porto Alegre register, without prior notification, for a debt she did not incur, in the amount of R$1.5 thousand. In a sentence handed down exactly one year later, judge Sandro Silva Sanchotene won the case for the author. He declared the debt null and void and ordered the store to pay moral damages in the amount of R$3,500.
"The author cannot be compelled to produce negative proof that she did not receive the 2nd copy of the card and that she did not make the purchases, which is why the non-existence of the debt is declared and the restriction canceled", recorded the sentence.
The judge, however, dismissed the action in relation to the CDL, as he did not envisage an illicit act that justifies the duty to repair moral damages. "The restriction body is not responsible for the existence or not of the debt, as it acts in accordance with the instructions of the associates [retailers] . Its responsibility is restricted to prior notification", concluded Sanchotene.