The Court of Cassation accepted the appeal of a company selling gaming machines against the ruling of the Court of Appeal of Rome which had confirmed what was sanctioned by the Court of Rome which had declared the right to compensation for damages towards the Customs agency and monopolies.
The story involves a company from the Terni area, which he had purchased and then put into operation
sale of electronic gaming devices normally used by users in the relevant gaming rooms.
The devices were purchased as they were deemed to comply with the technical specifications imposed by the Customs and Monopolies Agency.
Subsequently, those same gaming machines were then subject to a criminal seizure order, based precisely on their administrative irregularity, a seizure which was then
transformed into a confiscation order, following criminal proceedings.
The company then sued the Customs Agency, complaining that it had suffered damage due to the fact that it had mistakenly relied on the certification of regularity of the devices, which later proved to be incorrect, and in the consequent ablation measure imposed on the company by the criminal judge.
In 2016, the Court of Rome had declared the right to compensation for damages to be time-barred, and the decision was confirmed by the Court of Appeal of Rome, which had considered the objection of limitation to be timely formulated, and observed that it was a five-year period, pending the non-contractual nature of the liability, and that that term ran from the moment of
seizure and not by that of confiscation.
The appellant had objected, at first instance, to the Administration's late appearance in court: the judge had terminated it with the decree setting the hearing, while the appearance occurred subsequently.
The Court had not ruled, and the question was brought up again on appeal, where it was rejected with the following argument: the appearance is considered timely if it takes place within ten days before the hearing (ex article 702 bis c.p.c.), not instead noting the different deadline assigned by the judge, the forfeiture (from the statute of limitations exception) being "connected exclusively to the defendant's failure to appear within the period of ten days before the hearing". More precisely, if the deadline for the appearance of the defendant can be set before ten days (as in the case that concerns us) by means of the order of the judge, who sets the hearing, the deadline for objecting to the statute of limitations has a different fate, in How much
coincides with the tenth day before the hearing, by express provision of Article 702 of the Code of Civil Procedure.
This reconstruction was contested by the appellant, who "instead assumes that the two deadlines coincide (for appearing and for objecting) and expire when the judge sets the deadline for appearing,
term which otherwise would have no reason to exist if the legal one were to be applied, or if the latter were to replace it automatically".
The Court of Cassation found this reason for opposition to be well founded.
