APPEAL BY MEANS OF SCANNED COPY: THE RISKS OF FORFEITURE
The Tribunal of Napoli Nord, Labor Section, in judgment no. 600 of February 10, 2025, stated that the submission via certified email (PEC) of a scanned copy of a dismissal appeal, which lacks the necessary requirements for the effectiveness of digital copies of analog documents to be equivalent to the original paper version, is considered insufficient to prevent the forfeiture of the deadline for appealing the dismissal.
According to the Tribunal's reasoning, considering preliminarily that (a) the act of appealing a dismissal is a receptive act, meaning it must come to the employer's knowledge to produce its effects, and that (b) established case law affirms that a dismissal can be appealed with any written act as long as it unequivocally demonstrates the worker's intention to contest the dismissal, it is necessary that such an act can be reliably attributed to its author, ensuring the document's origin is verified. The Tribunal notes that, for this verification, the requirements outlined in Article 22 of Legislative Decree 82/2005 and subsequent amendments were not met in this case. Specifically, the scanned copy lacked a digital signature and was not accompanied by any certification of conformity nor created in compliance with AGID guidelines. Therefore, the legal form requirement for the validity of the act was not satisfied, and the deadline for appealing the dismissal has expired in the meantime
Noting that a formally valid dismissal appeal was not made within the 60 days stipulated by Article 6 of Law 604/1966, the Tribunal upheld the employer's objection of forfeiture.
