University of Genoa placed under administration by the TAR: “Sentence not respected on the canceled Engineering competition”

The University of Genoa was placed under judicial review by the TAR judges for not having respected the very detailed indications of a 2022 ruling which annulled the outcome of a competition for the appointment of a full professor in engineering.

The chair was that of the Department of Civil, Chemical and Environmental Engineering (Dicca) for the maritime hydraulic constructions and hydrology sector. The Commission had chosen Professor Giorgio Boni as the winner.

But the second place winner, Professor Luca Giovanni Lanza, had appealed and the judges had agreed with him, highlighting how Lanza’s qualifications should have guaranteed him a higher score than that of the first place winner. The sentence had «stigmatised the work of the commission which, even in the face of higher scores for Lanza’s publications, diminished its collegial judgement». Furthermore, among the grounds of appeal, not addressed because they were already absorbed by the first ground, there was also a possible conflict deriving from the presence in the commission “of two members, the president Professor Roth (head of the Department, ed) and the foreign member Professor Llasat, in a position of incompatibility, for having collaborated on a stable basis and signed publications co-authored with the winner”.

Except that, two years later, a few days ago, the TAR found itself facing a new appeal from Professor Lanza, assisted by lawyers Patrizia Stallone and Gianluca Betti.

The University of Genoa, after the 2022 ruling, annulled the result, appointed a new commission and in the end the winner was once again Professor Boni. But the new selection commission «instead of simply re-evaluating the competitors on the basis of the evaluation criteria established in the previous selection, it developed new ones». But in the first sentence the TAR explained that the selection criteria should not be changed but only “correctly applied”. Therefore, the judges wrote today, the university “has violated the dictum (the judge’s ruling, ed.) of the 2022 sentence”. Thus the Court once again accepted Lanza’s appeal and «ordered the university to comply with the aforementioned final ruling… by carrying out new collegial judgments in which the scientific production of the two candidates is evaluated in compliance with what has been specified».

That’s not all, though. To avoid further diversions, the TAR orders to «conclude the procedure with the adoption of the Rector’s decree to be adopted within 75 days» and even «In the case of failure to conclude the operations within the aforementioned deadline, the Board will now appoint the commissioner ad acta the Secretary General of the Ministry of University and Research who will appoint the judging commission for the purpose of executing the judgment according to the above criteria, guaranteeing the conclusion of the operations within 90 days”.

The university was also condemned to pay 6 thousand euros in legal costs which, added to the 4 thousand already paid for the first appeal, deprive the university of funds that are always in short supply, especially for an affair whose outcome was easily predictable.

It is not the first case of its kind. For seven years the full professorship of Commercial Law has been awaiting the winner of a competition. Four times it was awarded to Marco Arato and four times the courts accepted the appeals of the second place winner, Paolo Giudici.