Archive note: This text comes from the old archive of Nomika Epilekta and is preserved with care for historical and informational reading.

Two naive residents of the Greek provinces wanted to seek the assistance of the State, through the courts, in order to be compensated for damage caused to them by an inconsistent contractor, who breached the contract concluded between them for the construction of a building project.

This is common conduct in our country, not only by contractors but also by other professionals who rarely perform their contractual obligations on time, consistently and professionally. As a rule, they carry out the work they undertook carelessly, abandon it half-finished and defective, and disappear. They do not respond to the notices of their principals, the owners of the work, whom they exhaust and damage in countless ways they devise. Thus, as is known, many disputes are created, which the civil, or political, courts are called upon to settle by their decisions. In the present case, the provincial residents had the misfortune to turn to another professional, a lawyer this time, who, although he took the fee he requested, ...forgot to pay to the state an insignificant sum of money, the so-called "lawsuit stamp duty" or judicial stamp, with the result that the court rejected the plaintiffs' action. The reason for the rejection was formal and had nothing to do with the substance of the case, which the court did not examine. As noted in the judicial decision by which the action was rejected, examination of the case was prevented because of the meaningless formal omission. According to the law, when the court, while hearing a specific civil case, finds a formal deficiency or omission, it has the official obligation to call upon the litigant who failed to observe a formality, such as paying the judicial stamp duty, to cure the formal deficiency, so that citizens' requests for effective judicial protection are not rejected without reason because of non-observance of formalities. Against the decision that rejected the action because the lawsuit stamp duty had not been paid, the lawyer did not file an appeal, but preferred to file a new action, which, however, was rejected on the judicial reasoning that the rejection of the first action for a formal reason, namely because of the failure to pay the lawsuit stamp duty of trivial value, prevented judgment of the new action, even though this time the lawsuit stamp duty was paid to the state. According to the judicial diagnosis, the decision that rejected the action because of non-payment of the lawsuit stamp duty of trivial value created res judicata, that is, a situation that prevented the two plaintiffs from seeking judicial protection by a new action, paying the lawsuit stamp duty. The case, because of the judicial worship of formalities and the injustice that resulted, was placed before the judgment of the country's highest court, that is, the Areios Pagos was asked to judge fairly and open the way for the vindication of the plaintiffs damaged by the contractor [see also the important judgment EVANGELOU v. GREECE of 13.01.2011, Grand Chamber section, of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR)] The Areios Pagos, faithful guardian of legality, supervising the correct application of the law, issued its final decision no. 1337/2011, presided over by the new president of the Areios Pagos, elected because of her ability, knowledge and qualifications, and together with other distinguished Areios Pagos judges held that "In the present case, the object of the first-instance proceedings was a claim for compensation... of the appellants-plaintiffs, that is, the two provincial residents who brought the compensation action hoping to be vindicated and compensated, arising from a contract for work that they concluded with the defendant-appellee, the contractor. Previously, by decision no. 120/2005 of the Multi-Member Court of First Instance of Thesprotia, action no. 45/1990 of the plaintiffs against the defendant, with the same historical and legal cause, had been rejected because of non-payment of the judicial stamp duty. The above decision became final, since no remedy was exercised against it... and the action, upon ex officio examination, was rejected as substantively unfounded... Consequently... res judicata was created concerning the substance of the case, preventing the filing of a new action concerning the same right by the same plaintiffs against the same defendant. Therefore, the action brought... must be rejected as inadmissible because of res judicata". According to the above decision of the Areios Pagos, "by so judging, the appellate court did not violate the above provisions concerning judicial stamp duty, and the arguments to the contrary, raised by the sole ground of cassation invoked under Article 560 no. 1 of the Code of Civil Procedure, which the Areios Pagos decision did not consider worthy of mention but treated as petty and insignificant, are unfounded". Because, however, the provincial residents in question had the recklessness to turn to the Areios Pagos over such an insignificant matter, significant only to them, and to trouble the supreme judges, who were forced to deal with the trivial object of their dispute with the contractor who damaged them, they were ordered to pay the contractor the amount of 2,700 euros as "litigation costs". Therefore, in the end, the person who wronged them was "vindicated" and those who suffered damage were punished. Thus, in the future they will think very seriously before daring to seek protection by turning to the courts and to lawyers. The best solution, under the conditions prevailing in our country, is henceforth to seek only divine help, praying fervently that their disputes may be resolved peacefully and that they do not become entangled in adventures by believing that human justice, and not divine justice, will vindicate them. This example, as follows from the decision of the Areios Pagos, must serve as a guide for everyone, so that they avoid becoming involved in judicial disputes. After all, according to the maxim, "it is better to be wronged than to wrong others". And recourse to the courts creates the greatest risk of injustice to the citizen, not only because of the worship by lawyers of formalities, as happens in all underdeveloped societies, but also because of the irrationally long duration of trials, which may exceed a decade or even, in many cases, twenty years. Thus, the duration of human life is not sufficient for most serious judicial disputes to be completed [and Nomika Epilekta: "the Areios Pagos rejected a convicted person's application"] and to end with the issuance of an unchallengeable decision. But we shall return to this.