The United Sections of the Supreme Court, with sentence no. 7756 of 27 March 2017, regarding the applicability of article. 1669 of the Civil Code, established the following rule: "art. 1669 c.c. is also applicable, in accordance with all the other conditions, to renovation works and, in general, to maintenance or modifications works to it long-lasting on pre-existing property, which (ruin or) presenting (obvious danger of ruin or) significant flaws accidents on the enjoyment and on the normal use of the asset, according to the destination own to the latter".

With this ruling the Supreme Court has resolved the doctrinal and jurisprudential contrast concerning the objective scope covered by art. 1669 of the Civil Code, which saw two different orientations contrasted: one for which the rule in comment would delimit its perimeter of operation to the construction of buildings or autonomous portions of buildings, thus excluding, without making any further distinction, the modification or repair works of pre-existing structures (Cass. N. 24143/2007, Cass. N. 10658/2015); the other, to which the sentence in question adheres, which, instead, adopting an extensive interpretation of the regulatory provision, claims that it must respond pursuant to art. 1669 c.c. also the author of works on a pre-existing building, when these affect the essential elements of the building or on secondary elements relevant to global functionality (Cass. n. 22553/2015).

Furthermore, the United Sections have highlighted how the barycentre of art. 1669 cc, in light of the widest and recent reconstruction of the category of "serious defects", which also include those defects that concern “secondary elements and accessories as long as they affect the overall functionality of the property", has moved from safety of third parties to the compromise of the normal enjoyment of the asset, and therefore from a publicistic and Aquileian perspective to a privatistic and contractual one.