Court of Cassation: in the event of dismissal, compensation remains within the limits of what was applied for

The Court of Cassation, with its judgement No. 13876 of 7 July 2016, said that any judge who – in the face of a petition from a claimant, which seeks, as a result of an unlawful dismissal, the sentencing of the employer to pay 6 times the final month’s actual global salary and, however, an amount not less than 2.5 monthly salaries – orders the reinstatement of the worker by forcing the employer to pay all the salaries not paid up to the date of the actual reinstatement to work, incurs the defect of excess. This is also true, even if the dismissal was not in written form. According to the Court, in fact, if the claimant in quantifying their claim for damages has placed a definite limit to the size of the quantum requested, the employer cannot be sentenced to pay an amount in excess of that. Moreover, the Court considers that this limit cannot be exceeded even with the reference “to the sum that the judge will decide” which may be included in the conclusions of the action, not only due to the purely formal content of the remark, that does not express an uncertainty about the amount of damage that should actually be liquidated, but mainly because deferring to the judge means relying on his discretion in determining the amount due between the minimum and maximum pursuant to Art. 8 of Law No. 604/1966.