Behind the ruling that ordered a board to cease monitoring and exposing debtors lies a little-known legal mechanism: the coercive fine of RD$2,000 for each day of non-compliance, which punishes disobedience to a court order.
SANTO DOMINGO – Ordering a neighborhood association to stop monitoring its residents or posting their debts on social media is only the first part of a constitutional protection order. The second part is ensuring compliance, and for this purpose, the Constitutional Court (TC), in its Ruling TC/0684/26, resorted to the astreinte, a fine that accumulates for each day of delay in the execution of a ruling.
In the ruling issued on July 27, 2026, in case file TC-05-2026-0032, the court imposed a fine of two thousand Dominican pesos (RD$2,000.00) on the Residents' Association of the Estrella Marina Residential Complex in La Romana, for each day of delay in complying with the order, counted from the date of notification of the decision. The amount was established in favor of the owners who filed the amparo action, including David Matos, Ana Teresa Kelly, and Luis Yan Carlos.
The Constitutional Court explained the legal basis for this power by citing Article 93 of Law No. 137-11, Organic Law of the Constitutional Court and Constitutional Procedures, which grants the judges of amparo the discretionary power to set fines to compel the offender to comply with the order.
The court also recalled the criterion it established in its Judgment TC/0438/17, according to which it is the responsibility of the judge of protection to impose this fine, either in favor of the plaintiff or a non-profit institution, and always under the criteria of reasonableness and proportionality.
In this case, the Constitutional Court expressly stated that the amount of the penalty was set considering the facts and the seriousness of the proven violations, language that directly refers to the measures of surveillance and public exposure of debts that the court itself described as contrary to the privacy, honor and good name of the owners.
It is worth noting that the penalty imposed by the Constitutional Court is not the only one that has appeared in this case file. The lower court ruling, number 1858-2025-SCIV-408, had established a fine of twenty-five thousand Dominican pesos (RD$25,000.00) per day of delay, linked to a different mandate: the organization of a new electoral process in the residential complex.
That ruling, however, was overturned in its entirety by the Constitutional Court, which considered that it exceeded the jurisdiction of a judge of amparo, so that the daily penalty of RD$2,000 corresponds only to the privacy measures that the constitutional court did confirm.
For condominium and residential boards, the underlying message is that noncompliance with a court order does not go without financial consequences, and that the amount of those consequences depends on the severity of the violation as determined by the court, not on a fixed fee.
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