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La sentenza è stata un disastro per l'avvocato.

La sentenza è stata un disastro per l'avvocato.
The ruling was a disaster for the lawyer.
From Lesson 425:Impersonal passive with indirect objects·Italian

Questions & Answers about La sentenza è stata un disastro per l'avvocato.

Why does sentenza mean "ruling" here? Doesn't it mean "sentence"?
Sentenza is a legal false friend. It means a court's "ruling", "verdict", or "judgment" (and can also refer to a penal "sentence"). If you want to talk about a grammatical "sentence" like the one you are reading right now, you should use the word frase.
Why is it è stata (feminine) when the noun right after it is un disastro (masculine)?
The verb must agree with its subject, not the predicate noun that comes after it. The subject here is la sentenza (feminine singular), so the past participle of essere becomes stata. The fact that it equates the subject to a masculine noun (un disastro) does not change this agreement.
Is è stata a passive voice construction here?
No, this is just the active voice in the passato prossimo tense. È stata simply means "was" (or "has been"). Essere takes itself as an auxiliary verb, so è (auxiliary) + stata (past participle of essere) forms the past tense.
Could I use an indirect object pronoun like gli instead of per l'avvocato?
In this specific context, using per is much more natural. While gli can sometimes replace per lui (for him), saying la sentenza gli è stata un disastro sounds quite awkward in Italian compared to using per l'avvocato, which cleanly expresses who the disaster affected.

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