The Court of Cassation goes back to the topic of liability for nosocomial infections

With two recent rulings, the Court of Cassation has once again addressed the issue of liability for infections arising in a hospital setting, examining, on the one hand, the characteristics of the exculpatory evidence capable of exempting the healthcare facility from liability and, on the other, the relevance of the adoption of different mechanisms for preventing infectious risk. In particular, first with ordinance no. 5490 of 22 February 2023 and, subsequently, with decision no. 6386 of 3 March 2023, the Supreme Court excluded the possibility of “strict liability” of the entity in relation to hypotheses of nosocomial infections, promptly listing the organizational measures whose concrete adoption, and proof in court, would allow to exclude the existence of the causal relationship between hospitalization and infection. In this perspective, the Court of Cassation, while reiterating the need for preventive acquisition of proof (even if only presumptive) affecting the victim of contracting the infection in the hospital context, draws up a real decalogue of the protection obligations incumbent on the organisation. The obligation of the structure is thus framed in precise and predetermined organizational tracks - typical, moreover, of "corporate responsibility" models - which direct the judge in evaluating the correctness of the censored conduct.