Can I sue a Brazilian clinic without flying back? The documents and the deposit

By Ramon Martins Andrade, attorney (OAB/RJ 188.374)

Legalisation is the old way a document signed in one country reached a court in another: a chain of certifications, each vouching for the last. The Hague Convention of 5 October 1961 was written to end that chain; the Hague Conference describes its purpose as replacing “the often long and costly legalisation process with the issuance of a single Apostille certificate”. Brazil came late: Decree 8.660 promulgated the Convention on 29 January 2016. Since then, a power of attorney signed abroad needs one certificate instead of several.

That history answers the question foreign patients ask once they are home: yes, a claim against a Brazilian clinic can be brought without flying back, through a lawyer holding your power of attorney. It takes a sequence of documents, in order, and one financial requirement that surprises claimants.

The chain, step by step

• The power of attorney. Under the Code of Civil Procedure, a general power of attorney for litigation lets the lawyer “perform all acts of the proceedings”, except a list of acts that “must appear in a specific clause”, among them settling, waiving the claim, receiving payment and giving a receipt (article 105; our translation). For someone abroad when a settlement is offered or money is paid, those clauses are the whole point; without them the lawyer cannot close the case for you.
• The apostille, or legalisation. A private power of attorney enters the Convention through the notary: notarial acts and official certificates on private documents, such as a recognition of signature, count as public documents under its article 1. The apostille certifies “the authenticity of the signature, the capacity in which the signatory acted” and the seal (article 3; our translation), never the content. If the country where you sign is not a Contracting Party, the older legalisation route applies; ask the Brazilian consulate there which route it accepts before signing.
• The sworn translation, Brazilian and last. A foreign-language document “may only be filed when accompanied by a Portuguese version” sent through official channels or “signed by a sworn translator” (article 192, sole paragraph; our translation). That means a public translator registered with a Brazilian state commercial registry (Law 14.195/2021, article 22), not a certified translator at home. Order matters for a reason found in the Convention itself: the apostille may be drawn up in the official language of the authority that issues it (article 4). Translate before it is affixed and part of what reaches the court is still untranslated.
• The CPF. The initial claim must state the claimant’s CPF, the individual taxpayer number (article 319, II). The claim will not be rejected for lack of it if obtaining it “would make access to justice impossible or excessively burdensome” (our translation), but having it before filing is simpler.
• The security deposit. The step nobody mentions in advance.

If a limitation period is about to run out, a lawyer may file first and produce the power of attorney within fifteen days (article 104): a safety valve, not a plan. On the periods, see How long do you have to sue a doctor in Brazil?

The deposit: what it secures, and when it is waived

Article 83 of the Code reads: “O autor, brasileiro ou estrangeiro, que residir fora do Brasil ou deixar de residir no país ao longo da tramitação de processo prestará caução suficiente ao pagamento das custas e dos honorários de advogado da parte contrária nas ações que propuser, se não tiver no Brasil bens imóveis que lhes assegurem o pagamento” (a claimant living outside Brazil “shall provide security sufficient to pay the costs and the fees of the opposing party’s lawyer” unless they own real estate in Brazil; our translation). Nationality is irrelevant; residence decides. A Brazilian living in Lisbon is caught; a foreigner living in Rio is not.

The security is not money for the clinic, nor a fee for suing. It guarantees what you would owe if you lost: the court costs and the fees Brazilian law awards to the winning side’s lawyer, explained in Losing a lawsuit in Brazil: the loser pays the other side’s lawyer. The Code waives it where a treaty to which Brazil is party says so, in enforcement proceedings and in a counterclaim.

The Las Leñas Protocol, signed within Mercosur and promulgated in Brazil by Decree 2.067/1996, provides that “no security or deposit, whatever its name, may be imposed by reason of the status of citizen or permanent resident of another State Party” (article 4; our translation). A claimant from Argentina, Paraguay or Uruguay should raise it at once; others should ask whether a bilateral agreement covers their country. Free legal aid, in turn, is open to “natural or legal persons, Brazilian or foreign” who lack the means to pay costs and fees, and it covers deposits “required by law for bringing an action” (article 98; our translation). The Code does not say in so many words whether that reaches the article 83 security. My own reading is that a guarantee the law requires before a case can proceed falls within that clause; a claimant who qualifies should ask for both at once.

England does it differently. Under its Civil Procedure Rules the defendant must apply, with written evidence, and the court “may” order security if it is satisfied “that it is just to make such an order” and the claimant “is resident out of the jurisdiction” (rules 25.26 and 25.27). Residence abroad opens the question; the judge still weighs it. The Brazilian text is drafted as a duty. I think the English design is the better one for patients: going home after an injury does not, by itself, make anyone a risk of unpaid costs, and a rule that presumes otherwise weighs most on those with the least money.

What distance changes, and what it does not

Research explains why all this happens after the flight home. McAuliffe and colleagues, in a 2023 systematic review in Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, gathered 20 studies describing 214 patients treated in the United States for complications of cosmetic surgery done abroad: most complications were infectious, treatment often lasted more than two months, 36.8% were hospitalised and 51.8% needed surgery. The review aggregates published reports of patients who sought care, at a modest level of evidence, and says little about Brazil: most of its patients had travelled to the Dominican Republic. It shows, at most, that the harm tends to mature at home, which is why the documents above are assembled from a distance.

Distance does not suspend the case. The Code allows a party living in another district to testify by videoconference (article 385); whether a judge extends that to a party abroad is for that court to decide. Nor does paperwork create a claim: a power of attorney correctly apostilled and translated carries a weak case exactly as far as a weak case goes. Whether there is anything to claim is covered in Cosmetic surgery in Brazil: the legal rights foreign patients don’t know they have and, for dentistry, in Dental work in Brazil went wrong: your rights as a foreign patient.

The paperwork comes before the merits

There is no shortcut through this sequence, and the costly errors are small: a power of attorney without the clause to settle, a translation made before the apostille, a deposit nobody budgeted for. None touches the merits, and each can stall a claim before a judge reads a line about the clinic. The page for international clients is where to start from abroad. Before signing anything, ask of your own case: does the document in front of me give my lawyer in Brazil every power the case may need, in the form a Brazilian court will accept?

This content is for information and education only. It does not constitute legal advice, advertising of results or any guarantee of outcome, under Rule 205/2021 of the Brazilian Bar Association (OAB).