A São Paulo court has ordered influencer and former coach Pablo Marçal to pay R$10,000 in moral damages to Marco Antonio Mills Martins over a 2024 campaign incident in which Marçal blew flour into Martins’s face and published video of the encounter online.¹

The two reports agree on the central findings: the footage, recorded during an event in Vila Madalena, was viewed more than 7 million times; Marçal accompanied it with a phrase implying drug use; and the court concluded that the conduct went beyond a minor annoyance. Judge Telma Berkelmans described the behavior as “disrespectful and inappropriate,” according to the account published by Brazil Left.¹ Brazil Right similarly reported that the court found the episode had harmed Martins’s honor and image, and said Marçal was found liable after failing to attend a conciliation hearing.²

There is little dispute in the reporting about the underlying incident, but the emphasis differs. Brazil Left foregrounded Martins’s response: he said the decision showed that “the internet is not a lawless land and that no one is above justice.”¹ At the same time, his legal team plans to appeal, arguing that the R$10,000 award is insignificant compared with the wealth Marçal declared to electoral authorities.¹

Brazil Right placed the ruling alongside Marçal’s broader electoral difficulties, noting that he remains ineligible after electoral-court decisions related to his 2024 São Paulo mayoral campaign. It also reported that his defense considered one of those measures disproportionate.² Marçal’s press office told both outlets he would not comment on the damages ruling.¹

Separately, commentator Allan Dos Santos criticized Marçal on X for abandoning what he said was a promised effort to weaken the Workers’ Party, reflecting political frustration rather than a response to the court case itself.Allan Dos Santos (allanconta5)³