Compensability of Damages in Excess of Blood Money in the Light of Judicial Precedent

The primary solution in Islamic jurisprudence and Iranian law in cases where an individual suffers bodily harm is payment of blood money. The presupposition of the legal literature is that blood money covered all the damages caused to a victim. However, based on this assumption, it is possible that in addition to physical damages, other types of damages may also have been inflicted upon a victim. In other words, in these situations, in principle, economic damages (costs incurred in the prevention, treatment and disability) and moral damages (pain and suffering caused by injury) are imposed on the person, which are different from purely physical injuries in terms of their nature.  Now, there is a question whether the conceptual scope of blood money includes all the aforementioned damages or not.  There is a disagreement in this regard. This difference of opinion has been aggravated, especially considering ambiguity in Article 14 of the Criminal Procedure Act and the lack of clarity of the concept of profits that have a strong probability of being obtained. Nevertheless, while the tendency of the judicial precedent is that blood money does not recover all the damages caused to individual, there is no strong precedent regarding which types of damages in excess of blood money is compensable. Using the analytical-descriptive approach while examining the judgments rendered by courts, this research is of the opinion that blood money is separately paid as a substitute for physical injury and material and moral damages caused to the victim to the extent that it does not lead to double recovery for the same injury, can be compensated.