Law, Judges and Authorized Gambling in Italy: A Tale of Contradictions

To date, notwithstanding the large number of scholarly investigations into the legal implications of gambling, little attention has been paid to the interaction between contract law, and the negative moral or social labelling which traditionally affects gambling contracts in many Western countries. The purpose of this article is to investigate how Italian civil courts have applied Civil code and Consumer code rules on abusive clauses to cases involving authorized gambling and betting contracts. These rules should apply to authorized gambling and betting contracts, which generally involve an individual player and a professional service provider, either because the player adheres to a standard contract or because she should be considered a consumer. Unfortunately, Italian judges often refrain from applying these protective rules to cases involving gaming and betting contracts, to the detriment of players. This article critically investigates these cases to explore how judges justify this differential treatment of players of this form of legal game, highlighting the harmful effects of this discriminatory treatment on consumers and society in general

Asbestos Cases in the Italian Courts: Duelling with Uncertainty

The article investigates Italian civil Courts case-law on asbestos damages, focusing mainly on the issues of causation and fault. The diseases caused by asbestos exposure are often multifactorial diseases, to which the test of condition sine qua non cannot be applied to ascertain causation. The analysis of Italian case-law reveals a lack of uniformity in the criteria adopted to affirm the causation, contrasted by the uniformity of the criteria used to held the fault of the defendants. Such situation generates uncertainty in the protection of the rights of both the petitioners and the defendants. The lack of homogeneity in the criteria applied to establish the existence of causation is not exclusive of asbestos compensation cases, but is a constant characteristic of Italian civil case law, only lately reversed. Lastly, the author suggests some criteria that could be applied to ascertain causation in asbestos cases and other multifactorial diseases

The reluctant lawmaker. The European Union and the regulation of gambling between the principle of free circulation of services and Member States prerogatives

Abstract Although the European Union legislator is generally very keen to rely primarily and sometimes even exclusively on economic considerations, and therefore to generally protect consumers’ interests, this attitude is largely different when gambling issues are a stake. In fact, even if it is generally undisputed, also by the same European Union legislator, that authorized gambling contracts are to be considered as consumers’ contracts, when facing the regulation of gambling contracts, the European Union often restrains from using all of its legislative powers. As a consequence, the European legislation on consumer’s contracts generally explicitly exclude from its application gambling contracts, and the same European institutions do not impose the principle on free circulation of services to cases of national restrictions of gambling services, with the same diligence observed in other fields. The explanations generally offered for this self-restraint of the European Union, based on the respect of the traditional national cultural and moral values or public health defence of the Member States, hide the unwillingness of the same European Union to confront the Member States economic interests and their traditional freedom to regulate gambling contracts. Implication statement The reluctance of the European Union to regulate online gambling contracts and to impose on all the Member States the principle of free circulation of services in the field of online gambling could often have negative effects for consumers