The Italian Supreme Court stated that the employer has no obligation to prove the fairness of the different treatment reserved to employees who have been subjected to two different disciplinary sanctions for the same conduct. With judgement no. 22115/2022, the Italian Supreme Court ruled on the employer's duty to justify the application of different measures to two employees who were charged with the commission of the same conduct punishable under the internal disciplinary code. More specifically, an employee was dismissed for just cause (therefore, no notice period was granted to him) due to the negligence he had used in carrying out his working activity, thus causing an incident at the workplace. Both the Court of first instance and the Court of appeals had previously decided to accept the company’s reasons, thus declining the employee’s demands, which he later brought towards the Italian Supreme Court. In particular, the employee complained that misconducts like the one he was sanctioned for – which had later brough to his dismissal – had already been contested to other employees. However, their relevant disciplinary procedure had ended up with a conservative sanction, thus significantly differentiating the plaintiff’s experience. In order to ground his claims, the latter brought some previous judgments to the attention of the Court, through which a general principle that same misconducts should develop into the same sanctioning measures was stated. Although the appeal lodged was later ruled inadmissible, the judges nevertheless analysed the merits of the claims put forward by the appellant, elaborating on the text of the rulings indicated therein in support of them. More precisely, the Court overcame the quoted statements reported by the employee, and clarified that, in such circumstances, it is not possible to place on the employer the burden to provide, for each dismissal, a specific set of reasons justifying the measure taken in comparison with others, adopted in similar cases. In other words, the judges clarified that, although the imposition of a disciplinary sanction must always be justified by the employer who adopts it, it does not require further justification such as providing proof of its equality compared to other decisions of the same kind. On the contrary, the alleged unequal treatment shall have to be acknowledged during the judicial proceeding, on the basis of the evidences brought by the employee claiming to have suffered such consequences, with which they will have to convince the judge of the inequality treatment they went through. Following such considerations, the judges concluded by stating that the documents and the proof provided in such cases shall be essential for the assessment of the situation concerning the employees, and the potentially unreasonable different treatments reserved to them. In the case at stake, the judges evaluated the employee’s claims to be too generic and not specific enough, thus they could not be considered in order to assess the inequalities in treatment, as demanded by the plaintiff.
