Recent South American Court Cases: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay

Abstract

This installment surveys ten South American jurisdictions: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay, with a coverage note on Suriname and French Guiana. Most of the material is expropriation. Brazil's Supreme Federal Tribunal is to decide whether possession without registered title is compensable, and has held that the difference between deposit and final award is paid through the precatório queue. Colombia's Constitutional Court treats the commercial appraisal as an input to compensation, not the compensation itself. Argentina's Ley 21.499 confines the indemnity to objective value; a Río Negro court ran interest from dispossession. Baseline studies state the measure, the valuation date, the valuer and the contest in Ecuador (a cadastral ceiling and an announcement freeze), Bolivia (an 1879 reglamento; market value on the agrarian track), Paraguay (expropriation by individual statute), Uruguay (value immediately before the taking, and a before-and-after valuation for street openings) and Guyana (market value at the gazetting of the public-work declaration, and the eighty percent advance payment introduced by Act No. 19 of 2024). Uruguay's Supreme Court set aside a court-appointed expert's untestable report and refused to average it with the authority's. Peru's Constitutional Tribunal held a nominalist update of the agrarian bonds confiscatory and upheld expropriation authorizations made by emergency decree. Chile's Supreme Court rejected listings as comparables, treated zoning as determinative of value, and separated inflation adjustment from interest. Shorter entries cover property tax, forced-sale floors, valuer liability, succession, joint-venture valuation and private damages to real property.