Short answer. Yes. Hospital bills are actual damages; the suffering itself is compensated separately, as moral damages, which the Code allows in quasi-delicts and in criminal offences resulting in physical injuries. You still have to prove the injury and show the suffering was the proximate result of the wrongful act.

What the law says

Moral damages may be recovered in the following and analogous cases: (1) A criminal offense resulting in physical injuries; (2) Quasi-delicts causing physical injuries;

Civil Code, Article 2219 — When Moral Damages May Be Recovered. Read the full provision →

What the law says

Moral damages include physical suffering, mental anguish, fright, serious anxiety, besmirched reputation, wounded feelings, moral shock, social humiliation, and similar injury.

Civil Code, Article 2217 — Moral Damages Defined. Read the full provision →

Two different losses, two different awards

The receipts and the suffering are not the same claim. Article 2199 entitles you to adequate compensation for pecuniary loss you have duly proved — the bills, the medicines, the lost earnings — and calls it actual or compensatory damages. Nothing in that figure pays for the months of pain or the fear of driving again, because those are not pecuniary losses and no receipt exists for them. Moral damages are the separate head under which they are claimed, and they are asked for in addition to the actual figure, not instead of it.

What the law counts as moral damage

The Code lists it rather than defining it: moral damages include physical suffering, mental anguish, fright, serious anxiety, besmirched reputation, wounded feelings, moral shock, social humiliation, and similar injury. The breadth is deliberate — it reaches the aftermath of a collision as much as the collision itself. But Article 2217 attaches a condition that decides most contested claims: the suffering must be the proximate result of the defendant's wrongful act. Distress that would have arrived anyway, or that traces to something else that happened in the same period, does not become recoverable because an accident is available to blame.

The case has to fall within the list

Moral damages are not available in every dispute where someone feels wronged. The article opens by allowing them in the following and analogous cases, and the first two entries are the ones an accident victim relies on: a criminal offence resulting in physical injuries, and quasi-delicts causing physical injuries. That phrasing carries a limit worth knowing before you spend money on a claim. Where nobody was hurt and the loss is purely to property or to a contract, this route is generally closed — Article 2220 opens it for breaches of contract only where the defendant acted fraudulently or in bad faith.

Nobody can tell you the amount in advance

There is no schedule and no multiplier of the hospital bill. Article 2216 says no proof of pecuniary loss is necessary for moral damages and leaves the assessment to the discretion of the court according to the circumstances of each case. Treat any confident peso figure offered at the outset with suspicion. What actually moves the assessment is the record of the injury and its aftermath: medical findings, how long treatment ran, what you could not do while it ran, and the testimony of the people who watched it. Assemble that before anyone argues about numbers.

Cases citing this provision

These Supreme Court decisions cite the provision above. We list them so you can read them yourself; the summaries of what each decided are not ours to give.

Related provisions

Note. Statute text quoted on this page is reproduced from the official enactment and is linked to the full provision. The explanation around it is general legal information from Vivas & Nobles Law Office, not legal advice. Whether it applies to your situation depends on facts only a lawyer reviewing them can assess.