Italy takes 12 years to decree that coffee break is not a right

IT MAY be regarded as a sacrosanct ritual by Italians, but breaking off from work to grab an espresso at the local bar is not an immutable right, the country’s highest court has ruled.

The supreme court in Rome ruled that the daily routine is not “a necessity” in a case that has dragged on for more than a decade, brought by a woman who tripped and broke her wrist while nipping out of the office to go for her morning coffee.

A coffee break is not a “compelling” need, the court ruled, but a free choice made by employees, and taken at their own risk.

The saga dates from 2009 when a public servant, named only as Rosanna, left her desk to go for an espresso with colleagues.

Returning to the office, she slipped on the pavement, fell to the ground and fractured her right wrist. During the 40 days in which she had to recuperate at home, her insurance company, Inail, refused to pay her compensation, decreeing that the accident was not related to work.

The woman took the company to court and won her case in a tribunal in Florence in 2013, with judges ordering Inail to pay her compensation and a disability allowance.

That ruling was confirmed in 2015 by an appeals court, with judges decreeing that the accident happened in the context of her work.

The insurance company then took the case to the court of cassation, the highest court in the country. Twelve years on from the accident, the court has handed down a definitive verdict, saying that Inail should not have had to pay compensation.

Going to a bar or café for a break from the office was “a risk that was taken willingly by the employee” and was not a “physiological need connected with her work activities”, judges ruled.

It did not matter that the woman’s boss had given her and her colleagues permission to head to the local bar on the basis that there was no canteen or coffee machine in the office.

The court ordered that the woman, who is now retired, to pay €5,300 (£4,500) in legal costs. Maria Gabriella Del Rosso, the woman’s lawyer, said that she was “disappointed and embittered by a decision that took more than 10 years to reach, an absurd length of time”.

“My client didn’t leave the office to go shopping,” Ms Del Rosso said. “She was satisfying a physiological need.”

That the case took 12 years to grind through the courts is no great surprise. The justice system is notoriously overloaded with cases and glacially slow in its deliberations.

Defendants have the automatic right to two levels of appeal, meaning that cases routinely drag on for years.