Court of Cassation: no obligation to relocate executives

With sentence no. 14193 dated 12 July 2016, the Court di Cassation confirmed that executives dismissed for economic reasons need not be relocated within a Group. In the case examined an executive applied to the Courts, claiming that his dismissal from the Italian branch of an American multinational was unlawful despite the justification for economic reasons. The executive supported the claim by saying that the Parent Company, at the moment he was hired, had given guarantees about his relocation within the Group after termination of employment. In the first instance the Court accepted the claim but the decision was overturned by the Court of Appeal and Court of Cassation. The latter, in particular, emphasized the principle in law according to which relocation «is excluded for executives because it is incompatible with the position as executive under a regimen of at-will employment and case law does not support the alternative hypothesis of dismissal due to objective reasons, applicable to non-executives». In other words, an employer who dismisses an executive on (justified) economic grounds does not need to demonstrate that alternative positions were available.