The loss would have happened even without the defendant's act — does that reduce what I can recover?

There is a stronger version of this argument, and it lives elsewhere

The strong version says the defendant's act did not cause the loss at all, in which case no damages provision helps you, because the causal link is missing. The weaker version, which is the one this article addresses, accepts the link but says the loss would have resulted in any event. That is offered as a reason for the court to equitably mitigate the damages, and the word to notice is that the court may do so. It is discretionary, and it trims the award rather than defeating the claim.

It asserts something that never happened

That is the difficulty for whoever raises it. Saying the warehouse would have flooded anyway, or the shipment would have been late regardless, is a claim about a world nobody can inspect, and it has to be supported by evidence drawn from this one: the condition of the building, the weather record, the state of the supplier, the fate of comparable consignments that same week. An assertion offered without any of that material is a rhetorical move rather than a defence. Ask what it rests on before conceding anything to it.

It usually arrives in a partial form

And the partial form is the dangerous one. The loss would have happened, but three months later. Half the stock would have spoiled anyway and only the rest is down to the defendant. The business was already failing and the breach merely hastened the end. Each of those, if made out, narrows the award without removing it, and the equitable adjustment the article permits is meant to reflect exactly that kind of gradation. So the real question is rarely all or nothing; it is how much of the loss the defendant's act actually accounts for.

Answer it with the specific

Records of the condition of the thing before the event, its maintenance and inspection history, the performance of the business in comparable earlier periods, and what happened to similarly placed parties who were not affected all go to whether the loss really was inevitable. Keep in mind that the article sets out instances a court may weigh, not rules that operate by themselves, so this is a question of evidence and degree from beginning to end. Assemble the comparison before the argument is made, not after.

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.

• In the Matter of Urgent Petition for the Release of Prisoners on Humanitarian Grounds, G.R. No. 252117, July 28, 2020 — read the decision on LawPhil →
• Tondo Medical Center, represented by Dr. Maria Isabelita M. Estrella vs. Rolando Rante, doing, G.R. No. 230645, July 1, 2019 — read the decision on LawPhil →
• Victoria Ong vs. Ernesto Bogñalbal, et al, G.R. No. 149140, September 12, 2006 — read the decision on LawPhil →

Related provisions

• Civil Code, Article 2214 — Contributory Negligence Mitigates
• Civil Code, Article 2199 — Actual Damages Must Be Proved