Short answer. No. Article 2234 requires the plaintiff to show that he is entitled to moral, temperate or compensatory damages before a court may consider whether exemplary damages should be awarded. The amount need not be proved, but entitlement to some other head of damages must be.
What the law says
the plaintiff must show that he is entitled to moral, temperate or compensatory damages before the court may consider the question of whether or not exemplary damages should be awarded
Civil Code, Article 2234 — Entitlement to Compensatory Damages First. Read the full provision →
What the law says
would be entitled to moral, temperate or compensatory damages were it not for the stipulation for liquidated damages
Civil Code, Article 2234 — Entitlement to Compensatory Damages First. Read the full provision →
Entitlement, not a sum already received
The requirement is that you are entitled to moral, temperate or compensatory damages, and the middle term is the one that rescues many claims. Article 2224 allows temperate or moderate damages, more than nominal and less than compensatory, where the court finds that some pecuniary loss was suffered but its amount cannot, from the nature of the case, be established with certainty. So a claimant who genuinely lost something but cannot document a precise figure is not automatically shut out of the exemplary question.
The amount was never the problem
The article opens by conceding the easy part: the amount of the exemplary damages need not be proved. Article 2216 says the same thing more broadly, dispensing with proof of pecuniary loss for moral, nominal, temperate, liquidated and exemplary damages and leaving their assessment to the discretion of the court. So nobody expects you to compute an exemplary figure. What the law will not do is award one in a vacuum, on a record where no compensable injury of any kind has been established at all.
The liquidated damages variant
The second sentence handles contracts carrying a liquidated damages clause, and it is easy to misread. Liquidated damages are recoverable without proof of loss, so a claimant relying on the clause might appear to have nothing left to show. The article closes that gap: before exemplary damages are considered in addition to the liquidated ones, the plaintiff must show that he would be entitled to moral, temperate or compensatory damages were it not for the stipulation for liquidated damages. The stipulation spares you proving the amount, not having suffered.
Build the case from the bottom up
Establish the compensable injury first, with receipts, records and testimony, and identify which head it belongs to. Then plead exemplary damages as an addition, grounded in the provision that fits your kind of case. A pleading that leads with outrage and treats the ordinary heads as a formality is the one most likely to come away with nothing, because the court never reaches the question the outrage was meant to answer.
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.
- United Coconut Planters Bank, Inc. vs. E. Ganzon, Inc, G.R. No. 244247, November 10, 2021 — read the decision on LawPhil →
- Manila International Ports Terminal, Inc. vs. Philippine Ports Authority/Philippine Ports Authority vs. Manila International, G.R. No. 196199 / G.R. No. 196252, December 7, 2021 — read the decision on LawPhil →
- Pastora Ganancial vs. Betty Cabugao, G.R. No. 203348, July 6, 2020 — read the decision on LawPhil →
- Loyola Life Plans Incorporated (now Loyola Plans Consolidated, Inc. and Angelita D. Lumiqued), G.R. No. 228402 / G.R. No. 222912, August 26, 2020 — read the decision on LawPhil →
Related provisions
- Civil Code, Article 2224 — Temperate Damages Defined
- Civil Code, Article 2216 — No Proof of Pecuniary Loss Required