Court of Cassation 12 October 2015: dismissal and defensive controls

With its ruling no. 20440 of 12 October 2015, the Court of Cassation declared a dismissal of an employee by an employer lawful, after having ascertained – based on records from a GPS installed on a company car, as well as on the basis of results from investigations, – that the employee left the company premises during work hours to spend time in cafes or cafeterias to laugh and joke with his colleagues. By thus pronouncing the Cassation confirmed the legality of defensive controls, i.e. controls “intended to detect specific shortcomings and behavior outside of normal working activity as well as illegal” and even more so when the work is performed off company premises “in places where it is easier to harm the interest in the exact performance of a job and the company’s image, without the employer’s knowledge. Basically not every control made by the employer can be considered illegal; there are times when the injured party is precisely the employer, who thus must be able to use the technological instruments at his disposal to protect his company’s assets.