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

A fundamental demand of society is that real justice be delivered in every case by the courts and that the innate sense of fairness in every person be satisfied within a reasonable time.

In our country, as happens in all social sectors and in all, without exception, institutions and functions of the state, the state system for resolving disputes, that is, the judiciary, also malfunctions. As a result, timely and true justice is not administered, but rather justice in appearance. This is attributed to specific reasons, one of which is the great delay in resolving even minor disputes and in punishing the truly guilty through the courts.

Even these courts of first-instance jurisdiction, namely the single-member and multi-member courts of first instance, delay the issuance of their decisions, with the result that excessive delays create unfair situations for litigants and general public dissatisfaction.

A characteristic practical example makes the slowness of issuing court decisions understandable even in the simplest cases. Thus, from a traffic accident of 5 February 2006, which caused material damage to the two cars involved, an amount of 11,127 euros was awarded, exactly as requested in the lawsuit. Both the owner of one car, a pickup truck, and the owner and driver of the other car, a private passenger car, had filed opposing lawsuits, on 23.05.2006 and 01.11.2006 respectively, which were heard together, because of their connection, by the Single-Member Court of First Instance of Athens on 09.02.2007, by the automobile section.

This dispute was finally resolved by decision no. 125/2008 of the Single-Member Court of First Instance of Athens, issued on 09.01.2008, that is, after the passage of one year from the hearing date of the specific case. Consequently, for this simple dispute between two citizens, the excessively long period of an entire year was required. By this decision, it was held that the driver and owner of the private passenger car was liable and, consequently, one lawsuit was accepted and the other, opposing lawsuit, was rejected.

Because of the one-year waiting period until the issuance of the first-instance decision, no appeal was filed against it and so the litigation ended, because the losing litigant accepted defeat in order to "be done with it" and not because he was convinced by the decision of the Court of First Instance. That decision had accepted that exclusive responsibility for causing the traffic accident lay with the driver of the private passenger car and not with the driver of the pickup truck, whose driving conduct was, according to the court decision, blameless.

On the occasion of this relatively recent first-instance decision, one understands the situation prevailing in the area of so-called justice, that is, in the area of the courts and in their manner of operation, regarding the slowness in resolving even those disputes that should be settled immediately through a very fast procedure. Citizens should not be forced to spend significant time from their lives and to wear themselves down, not only materially, in futile court disputes which often grow and, from insignificant matters, become tormenting and endless for those involved.

It should be noted that more serious decisions, namely decisions resolving larger, extremely high-value and complex disputes, usually need ten to twenty years or even more before they become unchallengeable and are implemented. As a result, in very many cases the original litigants are no longer alive and the dispute, together with its painful consequences, passes into the jurisdiction of their heirs.

The competent authorities and the representatives of the various associations, of judges, lawyers and so on, must deal urgently with these burning issues of swift, effective and real justice, and not with trade-union publications, social events, artistic gatherings and the advertising of the union representatives who are elected from time to time, distributing their photographs on every occasion, as was also observed in our earlier article concerning the fair criticism made of trade-union publications, an article of June 2011 titled “criticism of trade-union publications”.