Court of Patti, judgment of 25 June 2026, No. 589

A clause compromissoria providinarbitration relates to territorial and subject-matter competence rather than jurisdiction; an exception founded on it, even if formally raised by a party as a plea of want of jurisdiction, must be recharacterised ex officio by the court as a plea of lack of competence under art. 819 ter cod. proc. civ.
For the purpose of classifying an arbitration agreement as arbitration or contractual arbitration (arbitrato irrituale), the ordinary interpretive canons under art. 1362 cod. civ. apply, having regard to the common intention of the parties as revealed by the literal wording and their overall conduct; in cases of doubt, the classification as arbitration is to be preferred, given the exceptional nature of art. 808 ter cod. proc. civ., which governs contractual arbitration (arbitrato irrituale), and the derogation from the principle that an award has the effect of a judicial decision.
The reference, in a clause compromissoria, to an 'arbitro compositore' goes to the power to decide in equity under art. 822 cod. proc. civ. and does not affect the arbitration character of the proceedings, which remains such where the clause expressly invokes the provisions of the Code of Civil Procedure.
The insertion of a clause compromissoria in a settlement agreement designed to resolve a dispute manifests, consistently with the good faith canon under art. 1366 cod. civ., the unequivocal intention of the parties to remove from the cognisance of the ordinary courts all disputes arising from that same agreement, including those concerning its performance and interpretation; it would be illogical to hold that the parties intended to submit generic future disputes to arbitration while reserving for the ordinary courts the very disputes concerning the implementation of the agreement they concluded to prevent them.
The requirement of determinability of the subject matter of the clause compromissoria under art. 808 cod. proc. civ. is satisfied by reference to the underlying substantive legal relationship — in condominium matters, by referce to 'condominium problems' — without the need for an exhaustive enumeration of every possible defect or breach; an express exclusion of certain categories of disputes from the clause confirms, by implication, that all other disputes concerning that relationship are submitted to arbitration.