What is the test for aggravated damages?

While aggravated damages are also compensatory, they are to be awarded only in cases where a defendant’s conduct has been “particularly high-handed or oppressive, thereby increasing the plaintiff’s humiliation and anxiety”. To allow such damages there must be a finding that a defendant was “motivated by actual malice, which increased the injury to the plaintiff, either by spreading further afield the damage to the reputation of the plaintiff, or by increasing the mental distress and humiliation of the plaintiff”: Hill v. Church of Scientology, 1995 CanLII 59 (SCC), [1995] 2 S.C.R. 1130, 126 D.L.R. (4th) 129, paras. 188 and 190.