Catastrophic non-pecuniary damage is compensable even if the agony lasts only a few hours

Catastrophic non-pecuniary damage must be compensated even if the agony lasts only a few hours, provided the victim remains conscious and is aware of the gravity of their condition and the approach of death.

This is the ruling of the Court of Cassation in judgment no. 16890, published on 29 May 2026, regarding compensation due to the family members of a child who fell down the stairwell of an abandoned building in the municipality of Naples.

The incident took place in 2005: a young man broke into a building under construction (which, according to the court’s reconstruction, lacked adequate security measures at the entrances and internal safeguards) and fell from the sixth floor, dying a few hours later. In the criminal trial, a general order for compensation and a provisional order were issued, which were subsequently upheld on appeal.

In the civil proceedings, the Naples Court of Appeal had upheld the liability of the municipality, the municipal official and the contractor, but had increased the minor’s contributory negligence to 40% and ruled out catastrophic damage, taking into account the fact that the victim survived for only three hours. The Court of Cassation quashed the decision and distinguished between ‘terminal biological damage’ and ‘catastrophic non-pecuniary damage’: the former requires survival for a significant period of time; the latter consists of the suffering arising from awareness of the severity of the injuries and the imminence of death, and thus does not depend on the duration of the agony. In terminal biological damage, the focus is on the temporary impairment of the victim’s physical and mental integrity during the period between the event and death; in catastrophic non-pecuniary damage, on the other hand, the clear perception of one’s own condition takes centre stage, that is, the inner suffering caused by the awareness of the imminent end.

The Court of Cassation refers to the findings of the preliminary investigation cited by the appellants, which showed that, following the fall, the child was conscious, was calling for help, was complaining of severe pain and was speaking to his sister. In the presence of such awareness, catastrophic non-pecuniary damage must be examined and, if proven, awarded, whilst the duration of the agony is relevant only for the purposes of quantification. It is therefore incorrect, according to the Court of Cassation, to automatically infer the exclusion of this head of compensation from the brevity of survival: whilst time plays a decisive role in determining compensation for terminal physical injury, the decisive factor for catastrophic non-pecuniary damage is the victim’s consciousness, the intensity of which may affect the amount of compensation but not the abstract entitlement to compensation for the harm suffered.