The Court of Cassation, with judgement of 1 March 2018 no. 4883, declared that a dismissal for just cause imposed on a worker because he had faked ill health is retaliatory. This is so because the disease of which the employee suffered turned out to be real on the basis of objective data and logical considerations originating in his evident intention to continue to work as an employee of the company. Further according to the Court of Cassation the outlined evidence base was univocal in connecting the employer’s dismissal to the refusal of the employee to accept a transaction on financial issues pertaining to a previous employment, thus revealing a retaliatory intent. Therefore, the Court declared the employer’s dismissal invalid, and condemned the company to reinstate the worker to his former job and to pay litigation fees. In essence, a dismissal, as interrupting act of employment, must be adopted only in the face of the employee’s unfair conduct, which infringes the fiduciary relationship between the parties, and not as a form of vengeance, under penalty of invalidity.
