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How to Contain Litigation After COVID

, by Fabio Todesco
Pietro Sirena obtained ministerial funding for a project that provides entrepreneurs with services useful in better understanding the non performance of contractual obligations due to force majeure

One of the side effects of the pandemic will likely be the surge in litigation, as a result of the non-performance (or non-conformity of performance) of contractual obligations, often due to restraint provisions adopted by public authorities.

Pietro Sirena, Professor of Private Law at Bocconi, was awarded a grant from the FISR 2020 COVID call, issued by the Special Integrative Fund for Research of the Ministry of University and Research, for the LINIS project (Linee-guida alla non imputabilità dell'impossibilità sopravvenuta - Guidelines to excluding liability for non-performance of contractual obligations). The project, in collaboration with Rossella Cerchia (University of Milano) and Laura Bugatti (University of Brescia), aims to contain litigation by making available to entrepreneurs two valuable legal services and has obtained a contribution of €42,000 from the FISR.

The first service consists of agile self-assessment guidelines (available both in paper and digital versions, to be distributed through the websites of the Chambers of Commerce and trade associations), suitable for guiding the entrepreneur in the complex legislative and regulatory landscape that has stratified in recent months.

The second service is a web application able to guide the entrepreneur - on the basis of the answers given to an online survey - towards possible solutions: certification by the Chamber of Commerce; termination of the contract for non-execution with exclusion of liability; or renegotiation of the contractual conditions. The survey will be totally anonymized, while still allowing the platform to acquire data that can be used for statistical and research purposes.

"These services will be useful both for obtaining of the certification from the local Chamber of Commerce, attesting the existence of the cause of force majeure, and for the renegotiation of the conditions originally established by the parties. They represent, in this way, a formidable tool for the deflation of litigation," said Professor Sirena.

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