A very protracted legal battle could have ended at the Palermo Tar, barring of course a renewed appeal to the CGA. The focus is on valuable archaeological finds and a big prize for those who accidentally discovered them.
Let’s go in order.
Late 1970: during some renovation work on a building in Agrigento, the man found some archaeological finds and reported them to the Superintendence, almost 10 years later he received compensation of 46 million lire, half the value of the assets discovered, and made a complaint.
From then on, a long tug-of-war began with the preservation of monuments, which, because the man did not accept the price and rather asked for the value of the finds to be recalculated with the establishment of an ad hoc commission.
Commission, which however does not take office, and so the man does not hesitate to appeal to the Tar, who after years agrees with the heirs, since the original author of this story is now deceased. The judgment comes before the Cga (which in turn agrees with the heirs) and the cassation.
Then (and we are now in the 2000s) a new order was issued to the Superintendence and Department of Cultural Heritage to appoint a technician to take care of appraising the value of the finds, then identification again technician by sentence.
At this point (we are in 2012) before the panel of experts could actually get to work, the Superintendency prepares an expert report and submits it to the court.
From here, a new legal process begins with the complainants, who, among other things, due to the lack of a hearing between the parties, have applied for the annulment of the report submitted, even if, according to the TAR, they themselves do not dispute the estimate of the finds.
However, the State Administrative Court ultimately ruled that the appeal was unfounded and the appointed technician was not required to deal with other conflicting experts, so the appeal was dismissed and the heirs were ordered to pay €2,000 in legal fees.