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If you have to deal with a public authority or you are an entity or a public body that needs to apply legislation that is often ambiguous and contradictory, you need lawyers who know how to work with the public administration or, if necessary, contrast it effectively, being familiar with the special rules in this respect and with the level of interests at stake. RFA is the Law Firm that you need.
Administrative law concerns the powers and functions of administrative authorities, the way in which they should be exercised and the forms of protection that are available to those who are damaged thereby when the authorities abuse such power. Administrative law has a large and diversified scope and has its own procedures and rules, which continuously change, whose application (or, very often, whose creation) pertains to many different parties (the State, other central administrations, Regions, Municipalities and other local administrations, relevant independent agencies and authorities, government-owned companies and authorities in charge of public services). The impact of the activity of the public administration on the life of citizens and undertakings can take many different shapes: some cases are about obtaining a performance, a service, a public contract or a licence required to pursue an activity or execute a project, or about their correct execution; other cases are about objecting to an authoritative measure or to the conduct of a public entity that unlawfully damages your rights or interests. The protection against the actions of public entities is entrusted to an expert group of “administrative” Courts – the TARs (Regional Administrative Courts) and the Council of State – which are distinct and separate from “ordinary” Courts that deal with disputes between private parties.
Therefore, this is a peculiar area of law in which you cannot improvise and which requires constantly updated expert knowledge and specific experience: whether you are an administration, a private individual or a company, we can offer such knowledge and experience with our professional expertise, even of an academic level, in this field, and can also advise you in relation to any criminal issues connected with the application of administrative rules (the so-called administrative criminal law).
Whatever “administrative” problem you may have, RFA can offer the specialized expertise and qualified experience of lawyers who have always been trained and worked in this field, considering it as their chosen field of action.
Public procurements are one of our key areas of expertise: whether the case concerns preliminary advice for the participation in a tender or its preparation, a dispute on its conduct and award or contract execution, we have a vast experience in assisting both awarding authorities and contractors, especially in the field of services and public works. The partners of Studio Legale RFA, advising both public entities and companies, have dealt, inter alia, with important procedures for the award of public contracts and services relating to gas, waste, water, transports and the management of cultural assets (“museum services”). Project financing, semi-public undertakings and other forms of the so-called “public-private partnership” (P.P.P.) are further specialized options that our partners have examined and worked upon since their introduction into the legal system.
The so-called “planning of the territory”, i.e. the public administration’s guidance and control over building and land transformation, implemented through different levels of town planning and a complex system of licences, which involves different issues (from purely building-town planning issues to the protection of the landscape, of the environment and of historical-cultural assets) falling within the power of multiple entities and authorities, is one of the fields of action of public administrations in which the relationship between public and private entities is most difficult. The delicate nature of the interests at stake, the economic effects of the decisions of administration bodies (or their inertia), the time required for the corresponding procedures, which often take longer than what is lawful, the lack of regulatory clarity due to overlapping rules at different levels and to Parliament’s indecision, which alternates simplification measures with other measures inspired by an a priori mistrust toward citizens, are the reason why expert legal advice can be decisive in this field, which is precisely the type of advice you can find at Studio Legale RFA, both during the preparation of the operation and in defending your interests in an Court action. Our experience in the field ranges from the most frequent cases concerning so-called “minor” building projects (not certainly “minor” in the eyes of the persons concerned), which all property owners and technicians have to deal with when liaising with their Town or Superintendence (and often even with their own “neighbours”), to those concerning larger real estate or land transformation operations, for which our clients include local entities, public companies and private investors, often foreigners. In all these cases, our Law Firm can also offer expert advice in relation to any criminal issues connected therewith and, where necessary, can provide advice in the corresponding proceedings, where our percentage of success is impressive.
The correct interpretation and application of the special rules on the procedure by which the Administration can expropriate private property for reasons of public benefit to execute works of public interest, is the first condition for the Administration’s completion of infrastructural projects in accordance with their pre-established timeframe and costs. On the other hand, the adequate and timely exploitation of specific forms of participation for private entities in these procedures can enable the owners concerned or groups representing broader interests (environmental, landscape, health interests) involved in the execution of public works, to avoid or anyhow minimize the impact thereof on their individual or collective interests, or at least to ensure that indemnity is effective and proportionate to the ensuing damage. Studio Legale RFA has solid experience in Court and out-of-Court advice provided both to private persons and public administrations, in the various phases that characterize expropriations: from preliminary project planning to the correct determination of the various indemnities provided for by the applicable rules, to the use of forms of amicable sale that are alternative to expropriation. As for the cases – which are indeed quite frequent – where the Public Administration expropriates private property without completing the expropriation procedure (the so-called “adverse possession”), we have dealt with many of these cases successfully, obtaining, where still possible and useful, the return of the land concerned or appropriate compensation, both in terms of indemnity for the period of illegal possession and of the value of the goods possessed when the Administration eventually decided to buy them.
Environmental law has a very broad scope and, starting from administrative law, it encompasses civil law (compensation for “environmental damage”) and often extends to criminal law, since the protection of the primary good (the “environment”) is increasingly sought, even with the imposition of significant penalties. In such a field, the “multidisciplinary” expertise of Studio Legale RFA is the best guarantee for comprehensive and qualified advice. Specifically, the experience of our partners ranges from the activity carried out thereby for regional agencies involved in environmental protection, or for the authorities that manage waste disposal services, to the assistance, before administrative and criminal Courts, provided to companies and industrial consortia operating in sectors directly concerned by the implementation of environmental rules (e.g. waste cycle management, tanning or renewable energies).
Although health law is generally identified with compensation for the liability of physicians and health facilities in so-called “medical malpractice” cases (which, however, fall within the scope of civil law), health law has an important “administrative” component. Specifically, it concerns the organisational problems of health services (which regard, in particular, ASL (Local Health Units) and other public bodies providing public health and socio-medical services), the control of health and socio-medical private services and the corresponding authorisation system (in relation to the natural and legal persons working in this field), and the right to the corresponding services (as an expression of the right to health granted to every “individual” by the Constitution). This is a highly specialized field in which the partners of Studio Legale RFA (specifically, Mr. Luca Righi who has held University lectures in recent years precisely on this issue) have had diverse experiences, both as advisors and members of internal assessment bodies of public entities within the Tuscan regional health system, and as representatives of companies dealing with issues relating to licences, accreditations and conventions or the award of socio-medical services, as well as with the application of the penalty system connected with the infringement of hygienic-health standards (for example in the food sector). Also in this field, the extension of our law firm’s expertise to “administrative criminal law” is particularly useful in those cases where the statutory system of penalties classifies infringements of health law as offences.
There aren’t many lawyers who deal specifically with issues connected with tourism which, despite being always mentioned as one of the most important areas for our economy, is one of the least known in terms of the administrative regulation of the corresponding professions and businesses. If you work in tourism and in the field of cultural assets – whether you perform a tourist profession, or you are a travel agency or a tour operator or an accommodation facility dealing with questions concerning “licences“, or an investor who must deal with “tourism town planning” issues, or an undertaking in the cultural sector involved in the management of cultural sites or museum facilities – we can provide a team of experts who have been professionally dealing with these issues for years. In the related sector of cultural assets and their management, we have assisted and continue to assist local and national companies in the granting and execution of licences for so-called “museum services” at tourist sites of primary national importance.
The so-called “privatisation” of public employment in the Nineties did not eliminate the latter’s specificity when compared to private employment: even if “contractualised”, public employment still follows rather peculiar rules of its own, whose core is now contained in a specific “consolidated act”, i.e. Legislative Decree n. 165/2001, which is frequently amended by Parliament whether for budget needs or to implement “reforms of public administration”, which are often nothing more than reviews of the payment and legal treatment of civil servants. Public employment, especially in the health sector and local entities, is a “traditional” field within our services: from public competitions for recruitment purposes or “vertical progressions” (for which an action still falls within the scope of administrative Courts), to issues regarding reorganisation processes that have an impact on the position of employees, to issues relating to employment “management” (which, as a result of “privatisation”, now fall within the scope of Industrial Tribunals) – whether they concern “horizontal progressions”, the assignment of “organisational positions”, part-time work, disciplinary or mobbing issues – we have dealt over the years with a wide variety of cases, advising both entities and their employees, both out-of-Court and in Court.
The possibility of being involved in proceedings for the so-called administrative liability for loss of revenue for the State is a risk that public directors, officers and employees run where, in performing their duties, they cause a loss, whether or not pecuniary in nature, for the Public Administration. The corresponding proceedings fall within the special jurisdiction of the Court of Auditors. The intensification of inspections and controls implemented by Regional Public Prosecutors before the Courts of Auditors, often stimulated, as regards local entities, by claims lodged by the public or political oppositions within municipal councils, when not resulting from criminal investigations, has recently caused the “Accounting Judges” to acquire a much more incisive role than in the past. When you are involved in this kind of proceedings, it is essential to present a prompt and effective case right from the preliminary stage of the so-called “invitation to claim”. For this reason it is advisable to rely on lawyers who are familiar with both the substantial rules regarding “faulty” administrative conducts and with the peculiar rules of proceedings before special accounting Courts and who can put forward the arguments that are most often decisive to prove the absence of “a loss of revenue for the State” (such as the lack of that special level of “seriousness” of the party’s “fault” which is required for its configuration, or the absence of a “loss”).