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Unlike a divorce, an annulment is an unusual way to end a marriage. It’s a legal declaration that the marriage was never valid. But even in the unusual world of annulments, one granted recently by an appeal court in Italy is extraordinary.

After a legal battle lasting over ten years, an Italian woman has had her marriage annulled because her husband smoked cannabis on their wedding night. That evening, in their bedroom, when her husband said something to the effect of “now let us relax”, among the things she was expecting him to do was decidedly not to roll a large joint. The woman, who is from a deeply traditional Italian family in Campagna, asked for a divorce immediately.

Now, following a detailed jurisprudential consultation with an ecclesiastical tribunal, the Appeal Court of Salerno, near Naples, has annulled the marriage. The woman had testified that she was outraged when he rolled the joint as, before the marriage, he had specifically denied ever smoking cannabis. The ecclesiastical tribunal had given an opinion that that the marriage was invalid because the man lied to his future wife about a material fact. In her judgement, Angelo Rossi, president of the Appeal Court of Salerno, said: "The woman was a girl who grew up in a very conservative family and wanted a husband who was honest."

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In England, some lawyers have done some deviant things on their wedding nights but have gotten away with it, especially if it involved hard work rather than enhanced relaxation. George Hill, a barrister who died in 1880, was a famously diligent advocate. He was a Serjeant (a distinguished barrister), who, because of his deeply detailed and convoluted arguments was known to his chums as Serjeant Labyrinth. He had to be summoned from his desk to attend his own wedding ceremony after the church bells started ringing. That evening he went to his Temple chambers where he stayed reading cases until dawn. What Anna Barbara, his wife, thought of her wedding night isn’t recorded.

Professor Gary Slapper is Director of the Centre for Law at The Open University

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