An email is an electronic document with an electronic signature, since the username and password are included in the definition of an electronic signature according to art. 1 lett.q of the Italian Digital Administration Code.
This is what the Court of Prato correctly states in its decision of 15th April 2011, which has been recently published.
Thus, the evidential value of an email is freely assessable in court, given its objective characteristics of quality, safety, integrity and unchangeability.
In the case in question, the judge ruled that an email did not qualify as evidence.
The ruling focused on the legal status of this type of document when evaluating the evidential relevance of an email produced in proceedings in opposition to an injunction as a demonstration of a promptly expressed complaint regarding defects encountered in a piece of machinery.
According to the Court of Prato, the email sent without the presence of a mechanism of certification does not provide positive identification of the sender and does not prove the message was received by the recipient.
However, there is no doubt that an email can be classified as a document with an electronic signature “as the username and password used to access the mailbox are included in the collection of data utilized as methods of identifying information under ‘Art. 1, Lett. q) of the Italian Digital Administration Code”-
Consequently, the evidential value of the email in question is freely assessable in formulating the ruling also in consideration of the further procedural findings, firstly the failure to refuse to accept and to promptly contest the facts therein represented.
In the case under examination the recipient had from the outset refused to accept the circumstances asserted by the email in question and in the absence of further suitable evidence to confirm its content, this led to a negative appraisal in terms of evidence. The opponent’s claims were therefore rejected.
The decision is nevertheless of great importance as it reaffirms that emails are documents complete with an electronic signature.
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