{"id":4747,"date":"2018-03-29T12:13:14","date_gmt":"2018-03-29T10:13:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ceper.it\/court-of-cassation-criminal-division-section-4-28-february-2018-no-9166\/"},"modified":"2026-03-12T12:30:23","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T11:30:23","slug":"court-of-cassation-criminal-division-section-4-28-february-2018-no-9166","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ceper.it\/en\/court-of-cassation-criminal-division-section-4-28-february-2018-no-9166\/","title":{"rendered":"Court of Cassation, Criminal Division, Section 4, 28 February 2018, No. 9166"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Court of Cassation, in an exemplary ruling, upheld the convictions of the defendants for the offence under Article 590, paragraphs 2 and 3, of the Italian Criminal Code, for very serious personal injuries to a worker in breach of accident prevention regulations. The facts: the worker, at a building site for the refurbishment of a building&#8217;s external facade, had climbed onto a walkway connected to the second level of scaffolding to collect materials; the platform and the level below gave way and the worker fell approximately six metres; investigations revealed that the scaffolding was wholly precarious, lacked protective measures and rested on an excavation made at the base of the wall for a planned garage entrance.<\/p>\n<p>The following were charged, on various grounds:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The de facto employer (multiple failures to comply with the regulations governing the erection, dismantling and modification of scaffolding in accordance with the state of the art, as well as failure to supervise the safety conditions of the assigned works and the application of the Safety and Coordination Plan requirements).<\/li>\n<li>The Works Manager and Safety Coordinator for both the Design and Execution Phases, for having prepared the Safety and Coordination Plan without analysing the additional fall-from-height risks arising from the impossibility of erecting the metal scaffolding in accordance with the manufacturer&#8217;s prescribed configurations due to a pillar over three metres high within the scaffolding itself, and for having failed to verify \u2014 through appropriate coordination and control actions \u2014 the application by the performing contractors of the Safety and Coordination Plan provisions, and in particular the erection of the scaffolding by Coperture Edil S.r.l. following the preparation of a design for the parts for which no specific structural configurations were provided.<\/li>\n<li>The supervisor of the employing company and site foreman, for having failed to promptly report to the employer the deficiencies in work equipment and the hazardous condition arising from the modification of the metal scaffolding in a manner deviating from the manufacturer&#8217;s prescribed configurations.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Two aspects of the ruling stand out, perennial in their relevance but here expressed with unequivocal clarity:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>The complementarity of all the above-mentioned guarantor figures, engaged \u2014 including in the field \u2014 in the legislator&#8217;s design, to ensure, each at their own level, the effective and constant safety of activities within a temporary or mobile construction site; and for this reason involved as co-defendants in the proceedings;<\/li>\n<li>The definitive recognition of the possibility of attributing the employer&#8217;s position in a concrete and substantive manner to a third party \u2014 a de facto employer (the employer of the lead contractor, first-tier contractor) \u2014 considered the party actually responsible for what occurred and the holder of the prevention powers and duties vis-a-vis the injured worker, despite not being formally the employer. In short, the principle of effectiveness applied in its most straightforward and concrete form and confirmed by the Supreme Court, with respect to the primary &#8220;de facto&#8221; guarantor of the worker, with particular emphasis on the duty of supervision incumbent upon the latter.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Case law source:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/olympus.uniurb.it\/index.php?option=com_content&amp;view=article&amp;id=18212:cassazione-penale,-sez-4,-28-febbraio-2018,-n-9166-caduta-dall-alto-a-causa-di-un-ponteggio-assolutamente-precario-responsabilit%C3%A0-del-datore-di-lavoro,-del-coordinatore-per-la-sicurezza-e-del-preposto&amp;catid=17&amp;Itemid=138\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">http:\/\/olympus.uniurb.it\/index.php?option=com_content&amp;view=article&amp;id=18212:cassazione-penale,-sez-4,-28-febbraio-2018,-n-9166-caduta-dall-alto-a-causa-di-un-ponteggio-assolutamente-precario-responsabilit%C3%A0-del-datore-di-lavoro,-del-coordinatore-per-la-sicurezza-e-del-preposto&amp;catid=17&amp;Itemid=138<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Court of Cassation, in an exemplary ruling, upheld the convictions of the defendants for the offence under Article 590, paragraphs 2 and 3, of the Italian Criminal Code, for very serious personal injuries to a worker in breach of accident prevention regulations. The facts: the worker, at a building site for the refurbishment of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4746,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ceper.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ceper.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ceper.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ceper.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ceper.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4747"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ceper.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4747\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4749,"href":"https:\/\/www.ceper.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4747\/revisions\/4749"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ceper.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ceper.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ceper.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ceper.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}