Court of Cassation: key ingredients for an agreement having definitive effects

With its judgment No. 3306 of 19 February 2016, the Court of Cassation confirmed the legal principle already stated in the Court’s decision No. 22540 of 2 October 2013, in virtue of which “the employee’s action aimed at recognition of rights connected to previous employment, cannot be precluded by generic, all-inclusive forms of waiver, in contrast with the principles established in regard to waivers and settlements concerning workers’ rights, where there is no proof – resulting from the investigation of the facts carried out by the court having jurisdiction as to the substance of the matter– that the employee was aware of the possible existence of certain rights and expressed the desire to waive such rights”. The foregoing shows that the effects of definitive settlement are strictly connected to two things that must exist at the time the agreement is signed: the employee’s awareness of his/her rights, and his/her actual desire to waive such rights. The occurrence of these two things, which is not even guaranteed by the fact that the agreement is reached in a protected environment, inevitably ends up being linked to the degree of detail with which the subject matter of any waiver is indicated in the wording of the agreement itself.