Content developed with the assistance of AI tools and reviewed by the author.
What US companies actually spend, how long they wait, and the mediation deadline that Italian defendants exploit
The average duration of a first-instance civil proceeding in Italy was 440 days in 2024, according to the Italian Ministry of Justice's own statistics — and that is the national average across all courts. In the specialised business chambers of the major northern tribunals, contested commercial cases regularly run 18 to 30 months before a first-instance judgment. An appeal adds three to five years. If your Italian counterparty defaults and you are counting on recovering by the time of your next board meeting, reset that expectation now.
This picture has shifted in 2026. Italy's urgent justice decree, Decree-Law no. 168 of 29 September 2026, in force from 30 September 2026 (D.L. 29 settembre 2026, n. 168), introduced procedural efficiency measures, addressed court workload, and allocated additional resources to overburdened divisions. Combined with the ongoing rollout of the Processo Civile Telematico 2.0 (Italy's mandatory digital-filing platform, PCT 2.0), break after 'in 2026'; start new sentence 'A US attorney…'. The changes are real. So is the underlying slowness.
Court costs in Italy are structured around the contributo unificato, the filing fee charged when a claim is lodged. The fee scales with the value of the claim. For a claim between €250,000 and €520,000, the filing fee exceeds €6,000. For a claim between €520,000 and €1,000,000, it reaches approximately €8,000. Above €1,000,000, the fee rises to around €13,500 at first instance — and each appellate stage triggers a fresh filing fee, typically calculated at one and a half times the first-instance amount.
These are court fees only. They do not include attorney fees, technical expert costs (consulente tecnico d'ufficio, the court-appointed expert whose fees are paid by the parties), or translation costs — every exhibit filed before Italian courts must be in Italian. split into two sentences at 'runs'. If you lose at first instance and appeal, double it.
Unlike in most US jurisdictions, Italy does not have a contingency fee system. Italian Bar rules prohibit a patto di quota lite in its classic US form, though Italian lawyers may agree a success premium within limits set by the Italian Bar's fee guidelines. Your Italian attorney will bill by the hour or on a fixed-fee basis. Cost-shifting is governed by the Italian Civil Procedure Code and falls within the court's discretion: a successful foreign claimant typically recovers part — not all — of its attorney fees from the losing party.
For company disputes above certain value thresholds and for intellectual property, unfair competition and corporate governance matters, Italian law assigns exclusive jurisdiction to the Sezioni specializzate in materia di impresa — the specialised business divisions of the major tribunals, known informally as the Tribunale delle Imprese. These exist in twelve Italian cities, including Milan, Rome, Turin and Naples. They have better docket management than ordinary civil divisions. They are still slow.
A realistic timeline for a commercial contractual dispute in the Milan or Turin Tribunale delle Imprese runs 18 to 30 months from filing to first-instance judgment on the merits. Rome and Naples run longer. An appeal to the Court of Appeal (Corte d'Appello) adds three to five years. A further appeal on points of law to the Italian Court of Cassation (Corte di Cassazione) — which we do not appear before directly / we do not practise before — can add another two to four years. Effective total duration to a final, unappealable judgment: eight to twelve years in a contested case is not uncommon.
D.L. 168/2026 targets this problem at the margins. It increases resources allocated to overloaded divisions and extends some procedural efficiency measures introduced by the Cartabia reform (Legislative Decree no. 149 of 10 October 2022, D.Lgs. 10 ottobre 2022, n. 149), which overhauled Italian civil procedure and took full effect from 28 February 2023. The Cartabia reform introduced stricter case-management powers for judges and compressed some interlocutory stages. The net effect: first-instance proceedings in the Tribunale delle Imprese in northern Italy are marginally faster in 2026 than in 2022. Do not plan for less than 18 months.
The one tool that does compress this timeline for a foreign claimant is the interim injunction. A sequestro conservativo (asset freeze injunction under Art. 671 of the Italian Code of Civil Procedure, Codice di Procedura Civile) can be obtained, in urgent cases, within two to four weeks, without the defendant being heard in advance. It freezes Italian bank accounts and real property up to the value of the claim. It is by far the most effective pressure tool available to a foreign claimant, and it is frequently underused by US counsel who approach Italy expecting a US-style discovery process that does not exist.
Yes — and this is the trap most foreign claimants walk into.
Legislative Decree no. 28 of 4 March 2010 (D.Lgs. 4 marzo 2010, n. 28), as substantially amended by Legislative Decree no. 149/2022, imposes mandatory mediation as a procedural condition before filing in court for a defined list of disputes. That list includes contractual disputes, company disputes, banking and financial services disputes, and real estate disputes — in short, most commercial claims a US company is likely to have against an Italian counterparty.
The procedure is not optional. You must file a mediation request with an accredited mediation body (organismo di mediazione) before issuing proceedings. The defendant is then summoned to a first meeting. If the defendant does not appear, or if mediation fails, you receive a certificate of failed mediation that you must attach to your court filing. Failure to attempt mediation is an absolute procedural bar: the court will not hear your claim. The Italian Court of Cassation has confirmed this rule consistently, most recently in Judgment no. 18199 of 11 July 2025 (Cass. civ., Sez. III, sent. 11 luglio 2025, n. 18199), which upheld the dismissal of a commercial claim where the claimant's mediation attempt was procedurally defective.
Here is what Italian law firm blogs do not say clearly: Italian defendants use mandatory mediation as a dilatory device. The time between filing the mediation request and receiving the failed-mediation certificate — because the defendant declines to engage — is typically three to four months. This is three to four months during which assets can be moved, contracts can be terminated, and financial positions can change. The counterintuitive response is to combine the mediation filing with an emergency application for a sequestro conservativo on the same day. Italian courts treat the asset-freeze application separately from the mediation obligation; the interim measure is not blocked by the mediation requirement.
Nemo debet esse iudex in propria causa — no one ought to be judge in their own cause. In the mediation context, this centuries-old maxim captures precisely why an Italian defendant who sits as evaluator of their own compliance with mediation rules will rarely engage voluntarily. The certified mediator is not a judge. Anticipate non-attendance.
This is the most expensive mistake the firm sees in practice.
A US company obtains a judgment in New York, Texas or California. It then asks Italian counsel to register it in Italy and seize the Italian defendant's assets. The process — called exequatur, the procedure under Arts. 64 to 68 of Italian Private International Law (Law no. 218 of 31 May 1995, L. 31 maggio 1995, n. 218) for recognising non-EU foreign judgments in Italy — requires an Italian court to verify jurisdiction, due process, finality and Italian public policy. It takes 12 to 24 months in practice. It fails more often than most US attorneys expect, typically on the ground that the Italian defendant was not served in a manner compliant with Italian procedural standards, or that the judgment includes punitive damages (which Italian courts have historically treated as contrary to Italian public policy, though the Italian Court of Cassation's United Sections narrowed this exclusion in their landmark ruling of 5 July 2017 no. 16601 (Cass. civ., SS.UU., sent. 5 luglio 2017, n. 16601), holding that punitive damages are not automatically contrary to public policy but must be assessed case by case).
Unlike the EU regime under Regulation (EU) no. 1215/2012 (Brussels Ia), which allows automatic enforcement of judgments between EU member states without any review of the merits, the US-Italy route has no treaty equivalent. There is no bilateral enforcement treaty between the United States and Italy. Every US judgment needs Italian court validation from scratch. In most cases involving disputed amounts above €100,000, the time and cost of the exequatur proceeding is comparable to the time and cost of filing a fresh Italian lawsuit — and the fresh lawsuit carries a higher success rate because the Italian court sees the merits rather than procedural technicalities.
The practical recommendation: if your contractual dispute with an Italian company has not yet produced a foreign judgment, consider whether to litigate in Italy from the outset rather than litigating at home and then enforcing. That decision depends on whether your contract has a choice-of-court clause and whether that clause is enforceable in Italy under Italian Private International Law. If it names an Italian court, you have no choice. If it names a US court, you can enforce in Italy but at the exequatur cost. If it names an arbitral tribunal, you are in a better position: Italy is a party to the New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards 1958, and enforcement of a foreign arbitral award under Italian procedure is faster and more reliable than enforcement of a foreign court judgment.
In our files, the most common procedural error by US companies entering Italian litigation is missing the mediation deadline after the first negative exchange with the Italian counterparty. Under D.Lgs. 28/2010 as amended, the mediation request must be filed before the statement of claim — not on the same day, not after. US in-house counsel accustomed to demand letters as a precursor to filing occasionally treat the Italian formal demand (diffida, the Italian equivalent of a cease-and-desist or a formal pre-litigation demand letter) as equivalent to the mediation filing. It is not. We see this deadline missed when the US company's US attorney manages the file without involving Italian counsel until the filing deadline is already in view. By that point, the three-to-four-month mediation window makes the Italian court filing date six months later than expected.
As the legal theorist Lon Fuller observed, the law has an inner morality that demands it be knowable and applicable in practice. Italian civil procedure is knowable. It rewards claimants who treat it as a distinct system, not a translation of US federal procedure.
What is the court filing fee (contributo unificato) for a €1 million commercial claim in Italy?
For a claim with a value exceeding €1,000,000, the filing fee at first instance is approximately €13,500. A subsequent appeal to the Italian Court of Appeal triggers a separate filing fee calculated at one and a half times the first-instance amount. These figures apply under the current fee schedule and should be verified at filing, as fee tables are revised periodically by Italian law.
Can a US company obtain an emergency asset freeze in Italy before a trial?
Yes. An application for a sequestro conservativo under Art. 671 of the Italian Code of Civil Procedure can be filed without notice to the defendant in urgent circumstances. Italian courts in Milan and Turin regularly hear and decide such applications within two to four weeks. The freeze covers Italian bank accounts and registered real property. The mandatory mediation requirement does not block an emergency interim injunction application.
Does the mandatory mediation obligation apply to cross-border disputes with Italian companies?
Yes. Mandatory mediation under D.Lgs. 28/2010 is triggered by the subject matter of the dispute and the Italian court's jurisdiction, not by the nationality of the parties. A US company suing an Italian company in an Italian court for breach of a supply contract must attempt mediation first, regardless of where the contract was signed or which law governs it. The accredited mediation body must be on the Italian Ministry of Justice's official register.
Panato Law Firm, led by Avv. Marco Panato in Verona, Italy, advises international clients — including US companies, investors and in-house legal teams — on Italian commercial litigation strategy, interim injunctions, enforcement proceedings and mandatory mediation compliance. If you are assessing whether to litigate in Italy or enforce a foreign judgment here, the next concrete step is a conflict check and a preliminary cost-and-timeline analysis specific to your claim value and court of jurisdiction. Write to info@panatolawfirm.com or call +39 045 5867034 to request that assessment.
HREFLANG BLOCK:
Editorial Team — Panato Law Firm Staff
