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The Milan District Court, together with the Milan Bar Association, has drawn up a protocol for the transfer of real estate without the intervention of a notary in divorce or separation proceedings. This form of transfer was opened by the decision of the united senates of the Court of Cassation…

11/29/2023

A recent decision of the Italian Court of Cassation (dated 02 May 2023) provides that, pursuant to Article 1759(1) of the Civil Code, the intermediary must inform the parties of circumstances of which he is aware, or which he should have been aware if he had exercised the diligence required by the…

11/23/2023

In Germany, there is still no limit on cash payments; whether it's a new car or expensive jewellery - cash laughs, according to a German saying.

09/25/2023

When a property is sold, the seller is liable to the buyer for any defects in the property that could in any way affect its value or usability. The seller is also obliged to ensure that the thing he sells is not defective in any way that would render it unsuitable for its intended use or reduce its…

08/09/2023

In Germany, property tax is levied by the cities and municipalities in whose territory the property is located, and the revenue also accrues exclusively to the cities and municipalities.

In its ruling of 10 April 2018, the Federal Constitutional Court declared the statutory regulations on land tax…

07/01/2022

Legislative Decree No. 152/2021, converted with amendments into Law No. 233/2021, updated and/or amended certain provisions of the Codice Civile (cc) relating to transport and forwarding:

  • the limitation of the compensation to be paid by the carrier, which used to refer exclusively to road…

Rescission of the preliminary contract if the seller does not declare that the property is attached. Seller ordered to repay double "caparra" (Cass. 12032/2022).

In real estate sales, people often - and rightly - talk about the protection of the buyer or the risks associated with the purchase of a…

Italian law grants much more generous amounts of compensation for pain and suffering than German law. This explains the disappointment of Italian accident victims in Germany who, even with significant injuries, receive only a fraction of what they would be entitled to in Italy. The French legal…

The procedure for the amicable resolution of business crises, which was introduced by a recent Italian Law, Decreto Legge No. 118/2021 in conjunction with the Executive Decree of 28th, of September 2021, is a newly introduced out-of-court negotiation tool aimed at rehabilitating Italian commercial…

In October, a series of articles appeared in Italian newspapers, mainly aimed at Italians living abroad, announcing (incorrectly) the abolition of tax benefits for the first home in Italy for Italians living abroad and registered with the A.I.R.E. (register of residents abroad); until now, Italians…

01/20/2022

Latest newsletter

Newsletter 54

In the Middle Ages, natural intelligence was partly banned and persecuted. The Italian data protection authority followed this example in March 2023 and first banned artificial intelligence. It is common knowledge that the ban on intelligence did not hold in the Middle Ages either. Now AI is everywhere, making work easier for many and yet spreading general unease - and rightly so. But maybe it really is just a new tool and it depends on the user. We wish all users a peaceful and responsible approach!

 

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Newsletter 53

Germany and Italy have always cross-fertilised and complemented each other in legal policy - it does not look as if this will change in the foreseeable future. It is an interesting competition between the two legal systems in some areas of law, for which there has been an arbiter in Luxembourg for 70 years: The ECJ. Here is an example:

In our grandparents' era, only the Grim Reaper could end an Italian marriage. Divorce in Italian" (see also the film with Stefania Sandrelli and Marcello Mastroianni) did not mean formal proceedings, but pure bloodshed. Many Italian couples who wanted to separate looked enviously to Germany.

Today it's the other way round. Italian divorce seekers do not even have to go to a judge to get divorced; the registrar is perfectly sufficient, and their "divorce light" must now be recognised by the German state (see ECJ judgment of 15.11.2022, Case C-646-20).

Nevertheless: For the Christmas holidays, we wish neither the Italian, nor the German, and certainly not the mixed couples any intentions of separation! Stay together!

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Newsletter 52

The means to deal with the energy crisis are still being sought in Italy; in Germany two original ideas have been implemented. Firstly, the mineral oil tax was temporarily reduced by € 0.30 to relieve consumers of the rapidly rising petrol prices. However, instead of choosing a voucher system that would have directly benefited the consumer, the tax burden of the mineral oil companies was reduced in the naive hope that they would pass the tax reduction on to the consumer. Petrol prices then did not fall significantly, but the profits of the mineral oil companies increased considerably. There was rare agreement between government and opposition that this attempt had failed. The second interesting idea is the introduction of a 9 euro monthly ticket for absolutely everyone, with which all train traffic in the Federal Republic - with the exception of express trains - can be used. More than 7 million tickets have already been sold. It remains to be seen with excitement whether this will be a real first step from individual transport to public transport. The experiment is initially limited to 3 months.

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Newsletter 51

At the last minute, we are able to report that the major Italian civil procedure reform was passed by the Chamber of Deputies on 25 November 2021. In part, the German civil procedure was the inspiration (see below, News from Italy). In part, there are many innovative approaches that are intended to relieve the judiciary and could also be a model for Germany, such as mandatory out-of-court mediation in many areas of law. The primary goal is to significantly reduce the duration of litigation. In Italy, a civil case took 7.3 years (2656 days) in 2018; the ministry hopes for a reduction of about 40%; it would then still be 1593 days for a civil case.

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Newsletter 50

Difficult, difficult! When the First Client Letter appeared, the world seemed healthier and the judiciary more peaceful. Today, the world is heated and the judiciary is bursting at the seams: both in Germany (Federal Constitutional Court) and in the Netherlands (Hague District Court), the executive is being ordered to act. Not a very good sign when we lawyers (!) have to save the world. But whatever happens, we are ready...

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Newsletter 49

The ambitious goal of this issue was to not even mention Corona or Covid19 . We didn't quite make it, as some areas of law - such as insurance law or family law - are currently dominated by C19 . The pandemic will soon be overcome, what is questionable are the late effects. We fear a world in which everything takes place on the couch. The Amazon boom will possibly further lead to the desolation of cities.... But we are optimistic. At the end of the pandemic, all the people will come out onto the streets, populate the cities, and shop for real again instead of online. That's the way it should be!

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Newsletter 48

Frederick the Great would have liked legal Tech (see Information for Colleagues, p.6). He was suspicious of any judicial discretionary decision. In his code of laws with over 29,000 paragraphs, everything was to be conclusively regulated and derived directly from the law. With such a database, every case would have to be solved automatically. Covid 19, for example, shows that something completely new can arise that could not be regulated beforehand. It is not the pandemic itself that is new, but the positive reaction of the state. In the past, as recently as the last 1950s with Asian flu, people just died, most of them at home. So let's be glad to live in our age and creatively tackle the legal problems that arise with genuine common sense (human tech)!

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Newsletter 47

This year there was 70 years of the Basic Law to celebrate. Article 1 reads, "Human dignity is inviolable." This provision is very topical in the age of the Internet, both in Italy and in Germany. A regional court in Berlin has ruled that it is a sign of freedom of expression for a deserving politician to be subjected to the very worst insults imaginable for a woman. At the same time, the former Italian interior minister is anything but restrained in his choice of words when he seeks adjectives for the current members of the government. In the movies of the fifties of the last century, children's ears were covered during such cannonades. A certain nostalgia is spreading among the editorial team members of the client letter, who are no longer dewy-eyed.

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