A case brought by the daughter of the late Fiat president Gianni Agnelli contesting the execution of his will opened here on Thursday but was adjourned after only 90 minutes.
Margherita Agnelli de Pahlen, the only surviving child of the late Fiat patriarch, is suing her father's most trusted advisers in a dispute over the management of his vast estate.
She filed suit against Franzo Grande Stevens, Gianluigi Gabetti and Siegfrid Maron, managers of Agnelli's inheritance, in order to obtain a fuller accounting of his estate.
Also cited in the suit is her mother, Marella Caracciolo Agnelli, who has defended the executors of her husband's will and claims Margherita received more than ample compensation for being excluded from family business affairs.
Margherita Agnelli's actions have also been criticised by her eldest son, John Elkann, who has been groomed to take over the family empire and is already deputy chairman of both Fiat and the family financial holding company IFIL.
Stevens - the Agnelli family's chief legal advisor - and Gabetti have official roles in the Agnelli family's trust, Giovanni Agnelli & C., which holds a 30% stake in Fiat through two quoted holding companies, IFI and IFIL.
Maron is a private adviser with no official role in the family holdings.
Thursday's hearing was adjourned after lawyers for those cited in the suit called into question the court's jurisdiction in the case.
Gianni Agnelli, one of the most powerful businessmen in postwar Italy and whose grandfather founded the carmaker in 1899, died on January 23, 2003 at the age of 81 after a long battle against prostate cancer.
Agnelli also had a son, Edoardo, but he committed suicide in November 2000 at the age of 46, leaping to his death from a motorway bridge.
The case brought by Margherita Agnelli opened almost five years after her father's death and on the same day that a major exhibition opened in Rome dedicated to the charismatic Fiat chief.
The exhibit was inaugurated by Italian President Giorgio Napolitano with Fiat's current top brass, including Chairman Luca Cordero di Montezemolo and CEO Sergio Marchionne, attending along with Marella Caracciolo Agnelli.
Napolitano defined Agnelli as a ''visionary'' who was ''one of the men who most helped to define Italian society in the latter decades of the past century''.
All members of the Agnelli family present at the inauguration - including Margherita's children John, Lapo and Ginevra Elkann, along with Gianni Agnelli's sisters Susanna and Mira Sole - made no comments to the press regarding the hearing in Turin.
Margherita Agnelli de Pahlen was the only adult family member absent at the exhibition opening.
