Is the ART Compensation Cap Unconstitutional? The Aquino Ruling
In Aquino, Isacio v. Cargo Servicios Industriales S.A., Argentina's Supreme Court (CSJN) struck down Article 39.1 of the Workers' Compensation Law (Ley de Riesgos del Trabajo, Ley 24.557) as unconstitutional, confirming that an injured worker keeps the right to sue their employer under ordinary civil law for full compensation when the accident was caused by the employer's negligence.
1. The Case Behind the Ruling
Isacio Aquino was 29 years old when he fell more than ten meters from the roof of a warehouse while working without a harness or lifelines his employer had failed to provide. The fall left him with a 100% permanent disability from irreversible paraplegia. Under the original text of Article 39.1 of Ley 24.557, employers were shielded from civil liability toward the worker: compensation was capped at the fixed schedule paid by the ART (Aseguradora de Riesgos del Trabajo, the mandatory workers' compensation insurer), which covered only a fraction of the real harm and the lost future earnings of a young worker facing lifelong disability.
2. What the Supreme Court Decided
The Court held that the LRT's closed compensation scheme violated the constitutional principle known as alterum non laedere (the duty not to harm others), grounded in Article 19 of the Constitución Nacional and in international human rights treaties with constitutional rank. Three holdings stand out:
- Workers are entitled to preferential constitutional protection: being an employee cannot lower the legal protection a person would otherwise have as the victim of a negligent injury.
- The employer's civil-liability shield was unconstitutional: barring a worker from suing under the Código Civil for the same harm any other victim could claim was an unjustified, regressive form of discrimination.
- Full civil compensation was reinstated as an option: the worker keeps the right to claim loss of chance, future medical costs, aesthetic damage, and full moral damages — not just the ART's scheduled payout.
The Court's Core Reasoning
"Man is the center of the entire legal system and, as an end in himself, his person is inviolable. The scheduled compensation of the workers' compensation system cannot become an insurmountable obstacle that denies the victim full reparation for harm unjustly suffered through the employer's willful misconduct or negligence."
3. Why It Matters for a Worker Today
Aquino is the reason a labor lawyer in Buenos Aires can offer an injured worker two separate paths after a serious accident. The first is the systemic route: a faster workers' compensation claim against the ART for the mandatory, tariffed benefit under the official disability scale. The second is the civil route: an ordinary damages claim against the employer under the Código Civil y Comercial, available when the accident involved a breach of workplace safety rules (Ley 19.587).
ART Claim vs. Civil Claim: Not the Same Thing
Collecting the ART's scheduled benefit does not use up a worker's rights. Whether the civil route is also available depends on proving employer fault or a safety violation — it is a separate, additional claim, not an alternative payout for the same harm.
More than twenty years later, Aquino remains the legal foundation for pursuing full civil damages whenever an employer's negligence, not just misfortune, caused the accident. For the Court's related doctrine limiting confiscatory cuts to severance pay, see the Vizzoti ruling; for how a workplace accident differs from a non-work-related illness under Argentine law, see our glossary. Read the full text at the CSJN official portal (Fallos 327:3753).