{"id":22311,"date":"2016-08-31T22:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-08-31T20:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.delucapartners.it\/news\/court-of-cassation-trial-period-and-its-validity\/"},"modified":"2026-02-16T16:08:21","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T15:08:21","slug":"court-of-cassation-trial-period-and-its-validity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.delucapartners.it\/en\/insights\/giurisprudenza\/court-of-cassation-trial-period-and-its-validity\/","title":{"rendered":"Court of Cassation: trial period and its validity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\">With sentence no. 16214 dated 3 August 2016, the Court of Cassation affirmed that <span lang=\"en-US\"><strong>a trial period<\/strong><\/span><span lang=\"en-US\"> must be <\/span><span lang=\"en-US\"><strong>accepted in writing<\/strong><\/span><span lang=\"en-US\"> by the employee. In this particular case, a female employee asked the Courts to quash the termination of her employment because the trial period specified in the employment contract had expired. The employer claimed that the employee, replying to an email from the company warning her of the need to extend the trial period, had offered to draft a letter herself to this effect, a letter she sent by email to the company unsigned. The letter was signed in two original copies by the legal representative of the company and handed over to her for her signature and her records. The trial period continued with a negative outcome for future employment, and the company notified the employee of the termination of employment, only to discover that she had not signed the extension letter. Confirming the previous rulings, the Court of Cassation pointed out that trial periods <\/span><span lang=\"en-US\"><strong>in writing<\/strong><\/span><span lang=\"en-US\"> pursuant to section 2096 of the Italian Civil Code are required <\/span><span lang=\"en-US\">\u00ab<\/span><span lang=\"en-US\"><em>ad substantiam<\/em><\/span><span lang=\"en-US\"><em>\u00bb<\/em><\/span><span lang=\"en-US\"> and <\/span><span lang=\"en-US\"><strong>must be established from the outset of the working relationship<\/strong><\/span><span lang=\"en-US\"> without equivalents or modification. In the opinion of the Court, in this case, the written form was defective because the employee had restricted herself to drafting an extension letter, sending it to the company by email, without signing it. Furthermore, according to the Court, <\/span><span lang=\"en-US\">\u00ab<\/span><span lang=\"en-US\"><em>the trial period is <\/em><\/span><span lang=\"en-US\"><em><strong>an incidental part of the contract<\/strong><\/em><\/span><span lang=\"en-US\"><em>, which does not exist and can have no effect if it is not expressly included by the parties in the individual contract<\/em><\/span><span lang=\"en-US\"><em>\u00bb<\/em><\/span><span lang=\"en-US\">. In other words, in the opinion of the Court, an <\/span><span lang=\"en-US\"><strong>agreement to extend the trial period,<\/strong><\/span><span lang=\"en-US\"> <\/span><span lang=\"en-US\"><strong>signed after<\/strong><\/span><span lang=\"en-US\"> the commencement of work and not part of the employment contract <\/span><span lang=\"en-US\"><strong>has no<\/strong><\/span><span lang=\"en-US\"> <\/span><span lang=\"en-US\"><strong>effect<\/strong><\/span><span lang=\"en-US\"> in relation to the duration of the trial period. Finally, the Court reaffirmed the principle according to which a trial period must be declared <\/span><span lang=\"en-US\"><strong>null and void <\/strong><\/span><span lang=\"en-US\">where <\/span><span lang=\"en-US\">\u00ab<\/span><span lang=\"en-US\"><em><strong>employment duties are not specified<\/strong><\/em><\/span><span lang=\"en-US\"><em>, and hence <\/em><\/span><span lang=\"en-US\"><em><strong>conversion <\/strong><\/em><\/span><span lang=\"en-US\"><em>of the working relationship into definitive employment from the outset<\/em><\/span><span lang=\"en-US\">&rdquo;. Because <\/span><span lang=\"en-US\">\u00ab<\/span><span lang=\"en-US\"><em>dismissal due to failure to satisfy during the trial period, where no trial valid period has been specified, is unjustified due to <\/em><\/span><span lang=\"en-US\"><em><strong>lack of proper cause<\/strong><\/em><\/span><span lang=\"en-US\"><em>\u00bb<\/em><\/span><span lang=\"en-US\">.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With sentence no. 16214 dated 3 August 2016, the Court of Cassation affirmed that a trial period must be accepted in writing by the employee. In this particular case, a female employee asked the Courts to quash the termination of her employment because the trial period specified in the employment contract had expired. The employer [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[167,177,190],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-case-law","category-insights"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Court of Cassation: trial period and its validity - De Luca &amp; Partners<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.delucapartners.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22311\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Court of Cassation: trial period and its validity - De Luca &amp; Partners\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"With sentence no. 16214 dated 3 August 2016, the Court of Cassation affirmed that a trial period must be accepted in writing by the employee. In this particular case, a female employee asked the Courts to quash the termination of her employment because the trial period specified in the employment contract had expired. 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