In the case of Patricolo and Others v. Italy the Court held that there had been no violation of the right to access to court in respect of the application of two applicants, as the decision to reject their appeal had not hindered their right of access to a court. It held that there has been a violation of the right to access to court in respect of the application of three applicants as the Court of Cassation had been in a transitional phase from paper-based to electronic processing, and not giving the applicants a fair chance to submit the relevant attestation at a later stage of the proceedings had gone beyond the aim of ensuring legal certainty and the proper administration of justice, and had prevented the applicants from having their case determined on the merits.

The case concerned inadmissibility decisions handed down by the Court of Cassation in the applicants’ appeals on points of law. They were given for the failure to comply with the formal requirements originally designed for paper-based processing and adapted by those court decisions to the context of documents lodged electronically before the lower courts.

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