Ep71 - Eni appealed. The Court rejected it!

Yesterday, I showed that, in May 2018, an alternative to judicial confrontation was publicly proposed during Eni’s Annual General Meeting:🔹 Mediation, proposed by critical shareholder Mauro Meggiolaro, representing Fondazione Finanza Etica.

The meeting never took place due to a lack of interest from the Italian oil giant.

So, the legal dispute continued.

📌 October 16, 2019.

The Rome Court of Appeal ruled on Eni’s appeal in the first lawsuit brought against me and the Brazilian Institute of Business Ethics.

Five years earlier, the Civil Court of Rome had rejected Eni’s lawsuit, in which the company initially sought €15 million in damages.

Eni appealed and reduced its claim to €5 million - coincidentally, the same amount as the unsuccessful 2015 proposal for an amicable settlement.

The Court recorded:

🔹 “The appellant now reduces its claim for damages to an amount equal to one-third of that originally sought...”

One-third of the original amount.

But the central issue remained:

🔹 “...however, the failure to allege consequential damage persists.”

In other words, Eni still failed to demonstrate the concrete consequences of the damage it claimed to have suffered.

The Court went further.

Eni had not provided evidence demonstrating that its institutional interlocutors had actually become aware of the communications and that its image had consequently suffered appreciable harm.

Nor had Eni alleged that any business deal or commercial relationship had been prevented or even hindered.

The conclusion was clear:

📌 “For these reasons, the appeal must be rejected”.

And in the operative part:

🔹 “The appeal is rejected”.

The Rome Court of Appeal rejected Enzo Di Giulio’s appeal.

Eni was also ordered to reimburse €10,000 in legal costs, plus the charges specified in the judgment.

Thus:

🔹 First instance: lawsuit rejected.

🔹 Second instance: Eni’s appeal rejected.

This does not mean that the Italian courts declared my allegations against Eni to be true.

That is not what the Court decided.

What the documents show is specific: Eni sought €15 million - later reduced to €5 million - but failed to demonstrate the concrete consequences of the alleged damage as required by the Italian courts.

This raises an inevitable question:

🔴 What was the nature of a €15 million lawsuit against a whistleblower and an organization dedicated to Business Ethics when the alleged damage could not be demonstrated?

A SLAPP - Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation?

Just one week later, mediation would reappear in this story - this time within the Italian judicial system itself.

That will be the next document in this story.


❎ Learn more:

1️⃣ Rome Court of Appeal Judgment (Oct 16, 2019):
🔹 original
🔹 English

2️⃣ Chronology of Facts for the Reconstruction of Events