What To Do When You Are Served With A Lawsuit Action in Greece

By Christos ILIOPOULOS*

Athens, 8 March 2022 If you live outside of Greece and you own property or have other assets or interests in Greece, you may find yourself in a case where you are served, at your foreign residence, with documents related to a lawsuit action which has been filed by someone before a court of law in Greece. In that case you are the respondent or defendant and the other person may be the petitioner or plaintiff.

In such a case, you must immediately contact an attorney in Greece and ideally scan all the pages of the documents you have been served with and e-mail them to the attorney you have decided that will represent you. In many lawsuit cases in Greece, there is a relatively short period of only 90 (ninety) days rom the time you have been served with the lawsuit action, within which you must file at the court all your written arguments, your evidence, documents, photographs, survey maps etc. and present the depositions or affidavits of your witnesses. The attorney in Greece will review the lawsuit action which you will have e-mailed him / her and will advise you how you can organize your defense aiming to have the lawsuit action dismissed or its claims rejected. This will include telling to your lawyer the truth in detail as you know it and as you believe it, explaining the facts and helping your attorney to write down the points where the lawsuit action against you is not stating the truth or where the facts are distorted or presented in a way which does not reflect the truth.

In most cases you will have to find witnesses who are willing to sign depositions or affidavits stating the facts which they know, in a way which on the one hand reflects reality and on the other helps your case at the court. You may believe that certain persons will definitely be willing to sign the affidavits, only to find out that they use all sorts of real or pretentious excuses not to get involved in your lawsuit adventure. Witnesses may be unwilling to testify at the court or even sign a deposition. In the Greek legal system a deposition is a written statement signed by the witness before a judge or a notary. There is no cross examination and the witness in the process of the affidavit is not required to answer questions by a judge or the attorney of any of the parties. The witness has only the obligation to state the truth, sign that the statement is true and accurate and give the oath, either religious or civil. There are of course civil law cases where the witness testifies before the court, in which case he / she is subject to the questions of the judge and the lawyers.

Each case has its own particularities and your guide in the court process will be your lawyer, who will suggest what documents and other types of evidence may be needed in order to help your case at the court. Your attorney will have the responsibility to act as your counsel and trusted advisor, much like it happens in most countries of the western world.

*Christos ILIOPOULOS, attorney at the Supreme Court of Greece , LL.M.

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