The communication of the death of one’s client to the other party through pec has the effect suspension of the trial, from the date of delivery of the certified mail message; with what follows regarding the starting date of the deadlines for the reinstatement of the process. This was established by the Supreme Court, with sentence no. 16141/2024, rejecting the successor’s appeal.
There Court of Appeal of Milanin fact, had pronounced the extinction of the judgment for lateness of the appeal for reinstatement. The prosecutor in the disputes had declared the death of his client on 5 September 2018. The quarterly deadline for reinstatement therefore expired on 5 December 2018, and this regardless of the ruling interrupting the trial, which has merely declaratory value; while the appeal for reinstatement was filed only on 8 January 2019.
In the appeal, the party had argued that the PEC should be classified as mere courtesy informationmissing the death certificate, and containing the declaration that the death “will be declared at the next hearing on 14 November 2018 with filing of the death certificate”.
The Court of Cassation recalls that the communication made by certified email from the lawyer of the party affected by the interruptive event to the lawyer of the other party is equivalent to formal notification of the event itself (n. 21375/2017). For the First Civil Section “this statement can certainly be shared, given that the civil procedural system has, over time, attributed effects that were first equivalent to, and then even substituted for, the traditional means of notification by means of bailiff or by ordinary mail”.
The art. 300 code proc. civ., then – explains the decision – reconnects the interruptive effect of the trial for death or loss of capacity to act to two different modes: the communication in the minutes of the hearing made by the prosecutor of the affected party of the event or the notification of this event to the opposing parties outside the hearing. In this case, the communication of the event via certified e-mail is made by the attorney for the disputes of the deceased party to the attorneys of the opposing parties.
For the Court, therefore, the literal tenor of what was communicated is objectively suitable for achieving the interruptive purpose: “the prosecutor of the deceased party, pending the judgment and between one hearing and another of the trial, communicates by certified email to the prosecutors of the other parties constituted the event of the death of one’s client”. While the claim that it is a “mere courtesy” is “difficult to support” as “a communication via certified e-mail, addressed to the official electronic mailbox of the opposing party’s lawyer, it is a suitable act to determine its effects in the trialcompletely regardless of the more or less obvious intentions of the sender”.
Then regarding the absence of death certificateit is completelyirrelevant”: the art. 300 code proc. civil in fact “it does not provide that this declaration must be accompanied, for the purposes of its validity, by the attachment of documentation certifying the actuality of the event”. And this is for the obvious reason that, apart from cases of untruthfulness of the declaration itself, the interruption starts from the date of the declaration or notification and not from the date of the death of the party.
Nor, finally, does the announcement of wanting to carry out the campaign count interruptive statement in the minutes of the future hearing, since “the interruptive effect produced by the declaration made by the prosecutor in the manner established by the first paragraph of art. 300 of the code of civil procedure is immediate and is entirely independent of any ruling by the judge, which must be recognized (no. 16797 of 24/05/2022) as having a merely declaratory nature”.
