Brazilian ordered to compensate jilted fiancee

[November 05, 2011]  RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) -- A court has ordered a Brazilian man to pay $6,500 for saying "I don't" to his former fiancee.

Rio de Janeiro state Judge Benedicto Abicair said that Marcelo de Azevedo Fernandes must pay for "moral and material" damages to Cristiane Costa de Andrade. The ruling was posted Friday on the court's website.

The couple was to have been married in September of 2007, but Fernandes called it off.

The judge said in his ruling that Andrade's "suffering, anguish and humiliation cannot be ignored."

The fine is supposed to pay for the jilted woman's wedding costs and visits to a psychologist.

Andrade's lawyer, Viviane Sines del Giudice, said neither she nor her client would make any immediate comment regarding the case. Calls to Fernandes' attorney, Fabiano Ayupp Magalhaes, went unanswered.

The O Estado de S. Paulo newspaper reported there have been at least two similar cases since 2004. In that year, a judge in the state of Sao Paulo ordered a man to pay his fiancee $4,500 for getting cold feet days before the weddings. A year later, a woman in Rio de Janeiro state received $2,000 after her fiance decided not to get married 75 days before the wedding.

[Associated Press]

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