29 Jan 2025Event location unknownUnidentified AI analysis system
Noticias Trabajo reports that a sugar company dismissed its laboratory manager on economic and organisational grounds on 29 January 2025. According to the report, the company cited multimillion-euro losses from a fall in sugar prices and a new model that replaced traditional laboratory analysis with artificial intelligence and remote sensing, which made the physical laboratory he ran unnecessary and led to its closure. He had first been moved to a technician post, which the company then also cut. He challenged the dismissal: the first-instance social court found that the company had calculated his severance on a shortened length of service and a lower daily salary, paying 6,427 euros instead of 8,556 euros, and declared the dismissal unfair. The High Court of Justice of Castilla y Leon (judgment 18/2026) upheld that ruling, finding the shortfall of almost 25% showed a conscious and deliberate intention to pay less. The report says the grounds for the dismissal were valid and that the ruling was not final.
AI relation unknown Medium reported severity Lawsuit Ongoing
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 01/11/2026
May 2024Event location unknownUnidentified machine-translation tools
Noticias Trabajo and Confilegal report that a translation and interpreting company dismissed a translator on objective grounds in May 2024, after 17 years in the job. According to the dismissal letter as quoted by Confilegal, the sector had been transformed by new technologies reinforced by the appearance of AI, and part of the translations clients used to order had disappeared because clients now did them by their own means. Noticias Trabajo reports that the company cited a fall in revenue and losses of about 11,000 euros in 2023 and 16,471 euros in the first quarter of 2024. The translator challenged the dismissal, arguing that the losses were not proven and that choosing her over the other employee was arbitrary. The social court no. 3 of Valladolid rejected her claim, and the High Court of Justice of Castilla y Leon dismissed her appeal and upheld the dismissal as justified on economic grounds; a training firm's commentary dates that ruling to 15 September 2025. Noticias Trabajo says the ruling was not yet final. The courts' reasoning, as reported, rests on the company's accounts; how much of the decline the AI tools caused was the employer's account.
AI relation unknown Medium reported severity Lawsuit Dismissed
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 01/11/2026
16 Dec 2024SpainUnidentified image tool
A Spanish video game studio that went from a profit in 2023 to losses of about 3.5 million euros in 2024, and had notified a court of its insolvency, opened a collective dismissal (ERE) on 30 October 2024 covering 13 of its 83 employees; an agreement was reached and the dismissals took effect in December 2024. According to a judgment of the High Court of Justice of Madrid as reported by EFE, Xataka and a lawyer's analysis, the dismissal letter given to a 3D artist said that images generated with artificial intelligence improved the visual quality of the studio's games and cut production time per scene, that it was adopting an AI-based production process, and that two senior 3D artists were therefore enough, so her post was abolished. The first-instance court held her dismissal fair and she did not appeal. The High Court's judgment 864/2026 of 8 October 2026 concerned a scriptwriter dismissed in the same procedure, whose letter did not mention AI: it dismissed her appeal, leaving her dismissal unfair but not void. Xataka says the letter relied above all on economic and productive causes, that the studio presented AI as a consequence imposed by its clients rather than as a direct cause, and that AI by itself does not justify a dismissal. The studio is not named and the judgment was not read.
AI relation unknown Medium reported severity Lawsuit Dismissed
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources · Added 30/10/2026
May 2023ItalyUnidentified image tool
A graphic designer hired in March 2022 by a cybersecurity company was dismissed in May 2023 for a justified objective reason, which the company gave as an internal reorganisation and the suppression of her post to contain costs during an economic crisis. She challenged the dismissal, arguing that the reorganisation was a pretext and that her tasks had been redistributed to other workers, not eliminated. According to legal press reports of the judgment, the company said the graphic-design tasks were first absorbed by other staff and the residual work was then done partly with the support of artificial-intelligence tools, which the marketing manager used to produce graphics of adequate quality at lower cost and in less time. The labour section of the Tribunale di Roma (judgment no. 9135 of 19 November 2025) found a real crisis and reorganisation, no possibility of redeploying her, and upheld the dismissal. The reports say the court treated AI as one of the tools the company used to make its structure more efficient, not as an autonomous cause of the dismissal; a commentary in Giustizia Insieme calls the publicity around a first dismissal caused by AI out of proportion to the ruling. The judgment itself was not read, and whether it was appealed is not reported.
AI relation unknown Medium reported severity Lawsuit Dismissed
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution disputed · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 24/10/2026
31 Oct 2025SpainUnidentified AI design tool
A company that designs and manufactures industrial furnaces dismissed a mechanical draughtsman on 31 October 2025 for objective reasons, citing a fall in business and the introduction of new technologies in its engineering department, including a model-based-definition design method and artificial-intelligence tools. According to press reports of the judgment, the dismissal letter put the cost of the tool licences at 4,725 euros a year against his gross annual salary of 29,871 euros and argued that the saving exceeded 80%. The social section of the Tribunal de Instancia de Bilbao declared the dismissal unfair, finding that the company had proved neither its economic losses nor the real implementation of the tools: an employee trained on the new method testified that she had never worked with it, and an implementation report was dated June 2026, seven months after the dismissal. The company must choose between reinstating the worker and paying 12,330.56 euros in compensation, less the amount already paid; the court rejected his claims that the dismissal was void and for a higher job category. One outlet reports that four draughtsmen were dismissed in total. El Periódico, which reported the same judgment in August 2026, dates it to early June 2026 and quotes the dismissal letter's statement that the company had introduced new artificial-intelligence systems that automate technical tasks previously done by specialised staff. The judgment was not read, and whether it is final is not reported.
AI relation unknown Medium reported severity Lawsuit Ongoing
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 5 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 16/10/2026
3 Apr 2026United StatesTimpani
Angelique Russell, a former manager of data science at HCA Healthcare, sued the hospital chain in federal court in Tennessee on 15 July 2026 for retaliatory discharge. Her complaint alleges that she found that Timpani, an AI system whose daily census predictions help set nurse staffing, overwrote the data behind its predictions so that its staffing decisions could not be audited or reproduced; that HCA placed her on a performance improvement plan weeks after she raised this; and that HCA fired her on 3 April 2026, days after she escalated her concerns to its Director of Responsible AI and its compliance department. She says the performance reasons were pretextual. These are allegations; HCA had not formally responded in court when WIRED reported on the suit on 2 October 2026.
AI relation unknown Medium reported severity Lawsuit Filed
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 13/10/2026
Jan 2025ItalyUnidentified customer-service AI tool
In January 2025 Maersk Italia, the Genoa-based Italian arm of the Danish logistics group, dismissed four employees of its Customer Service department without warning, according to the regional transport unions Filt Cgil, Fit Cisl and Uiltrasporti, who called a one-day strike. The unions said the company had moved the work to Manila and had also replaced part of the tasks done by the Genoa staff with artificial intelligence. One of the four, a woman, sued, while the other three accepted a severance offer. Euronews reported on 30 April 2026 that the Genoa labour court had ordered her reinstatement with compensation for the months she went unpaid, finding the dismissal unlawful because the employer had not tried to redeploy her within the company. A legal commentary in Domani gives the judgment's date as 30 March 2026, while Euronews says the decision came on Thursday, the eve of 1 May. The unions that backed the case described it as the first Italian case in which judges ruled on a dismissal linked to AI, although the Domani commentary also cites a Rome ruling of November 2025 on an AI-related dismissal. The Domani commentary does not name the employer. No source describes the AI system or what it did, and Maersk's account of the dismissals was not found.
AI relation unknown Medium reported severity Lawsuit Ongoing
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources · Added 11/10/2026
4 May 2026FranceDIGI editorial tool
Gisi, the Infopro Digital subsidiary that publishes L'Usine nouvelle, LSA and L'Argus de l'assurance, presented its works council (CSE) on 4 May 2026 with a reorganisation built around DIGI, an in-house generative-AI editorial tool. On 12 May it opened consultation on the reorganisation and on the resulting collective dismissal of its eight secrétaires de rédaction (sub-editors), with two new chef d'édition posts for the tasks the tool could not automate, on the company's estimate that the tool would take over about 70% of sub-editor tasks. Some 250 journalists across the group's 26 titles had struck in spring 2026 against a group-wide plan to cut 19 sub-editor posts, and according to Digital Watch, citing Stratégies, five of the eight Gisi sub-editors had received letters inviting them to pre-dismissal interviews. The CSE went to court in July. On 15 September 2026 the Créteil référé judge found that carrying out the plan on an approximate basis without real-situation testing appeared to present 'un risque grave et caractérisé sur la santé physique et mentale de plusieurs catégories de salariés'. The judge suspended the reorganisation and the collective dismissal, including the redeployment processes, until real-situation tests and pilot issues are produced, under a provisional penalty of 8,000 euros per day for three months, and refused the damages provision. Gisi had argued that the risk was supposed rather than proven. It said it would continue the tests and reserved the possibility of an appeal.
AI relation unknown Medium reported severity Lawsuit Ongoing
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 6 sources, 4 underlying accounts · Added 20/09/2026