This is a research based on empirical data arisen from court precedents of the Brazilian High Court of Appeals. We focused on how the Court estimates the value of non-pecuniary damages caused by the press. Targeted precedents were rendered as of 2004, the year in which Court overruled the upper threshold previously stated by Federal Law n. 5.250/1967, embracing from there on a case-by-case estimation. We evaluated benefits arisen from the two-phases test adopted by the Court to calculate how much money is enough to redress non-pecuniary damages. As a result, the research evidences that the test does not render the purported benefits, as there is great variation on the damages.