The ruling by the Court of Cassation in Rome came in a case involving a woman identified only as Vittoria, 25, who went to live with her boyfriend despite the opposition of her family, Italy's ANSA news agency reports.

A lower court found the woman's father and brother guilty of showing up at the couple's home with a shovel and using it to smash the door of the house and dent her partner's car.

In appealing the verdict, the girl's father argued that his daughter's insistence on living with a man she wasn't married to prompted him to suffer a temporary loss of control.

The Court of Cassation disagreed, saying "cohabitation is now accepted at all levels of society and cannot be considered contrary to legal norms or to the ethical, social or customary rules of the community."