News Supreme Court rulings May 2014

Defamation by Facebook is a crime even if no names are mentioned *

In ruling number 16712/2014, the Supreme Court ruled that a person who knowingly disseminates a statement injurious to another person’s reputation through Facebook and without mentioning the names of the offended persons is liable for the crime of defamation regulated by Article 595 of the Criminal Code.
According to the court, in fact, although no names were mentioned the author had indicated some details that could make the defamed person identifiable. To no avail that the said identification could be made by an inner circle of users.

It is a crime of harassment to repeatedly ring your ex-spouse’s doorbell at 5:30 am.

According to the Supreme Court of Cassation (Judgment No. 9780/2014), for the existence of the crime of harassment or disturbance of persons, the act performed by the perpetrator must be incisively capable of causing annoyance and petulance i.e. consisting of a pressing and indiscreet way of acting, such that it unpleasantly interferes with the private sphere of others.
The Justices of the Court, in fact, point out that the aforementioned offense can be realized even by a single action such as, for example, a phone call made after midnight justified by futile pretexts such as a request for the return of a suit or ringing, repeatedly, the doorbell of the ex-spouse’s house, in a time span of about an hour, around 6 a.m.

The husband who changes the lock to leave his wife outside commits the crime of arbitrary exercise of his own reasons.
The Supreme Court, in ruling no. 4137 of 2014, clarified that preventing the other spouse from re-entering the dwelling by changing the lock may constitute the extremes of the crime of “arbitrary exercise of one’s own reasons,” stipulated in Art. 392 c.p.
The Supreme Court, in fact, considers relevant to the commission of the aforementioned crime the conduct of a person who replaces the lock of his or her own family home to prevent the other spouse, a co-owner of the home, from re-entering the family home, even following the intervention of law enforcement officials.