The Benetton family has said it will fight the Italian government’s seizure of its road-toll assets in the wake of a deadly bridge collapse, in a confrontation between one of the country’s pre-eminent industrial dynasties and populist politicians demanding justice for a disaster that killed 39 people.

An engineer left a voicemail two days before a catastrophic bridge failure in Miami to say some cracking had been found at one end of the concrete span, but the voicemail was not picked up until after the collapse, Florida Department of Transportation (DoT) officials have said.