Areios Pagos rejected a pharmacy application, which she requested to be paid compensation, as, according to her claims, the Areopagites delayed in issuing a decision on a lawsuit related to non-payment of customer invoices.

This Department of the Supreme Court turned 3 years, one month and 18 days, to issue the decision concerning the pharmacy, although the case did not have any difficult or complex legal issue.

The Supreme Court ruled that there was no exceeding of the time of the reasonable duration of the trial according to the Greek legislation, but neither of the “reasonable deadline” provided for by the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Consequently, according to the Areopagite decision, the citizen-representative of a pharmacy who has been suffering for so many years, without his own fault and responsibility, is not entitled to compensation.

In more detail, the case of the pharmacy was discussed in the A1 Department of the Supreme Court on December 3, 2018. The conference of judges took place 16 months later, on April 15, 2019, and two years later, on January 21, 2022, the disputed decision was published (not clearly written and considered) .

However, the pharmacy, through its lawyer Dimitris Avarkiotis, filed an application for just satisfaction due to exceeding the reasonable duration of the trial, in accordance with law 4239/2014, claiming the amount of 40,000 euros.

The same Section of the Supreme Court, with its decision No. 2/2023, chaired by Areopagite Stavros Malainos, rejected the application for just satisfaction of the representatives of the pharmacy, due to exceeding the reasonable duration of the trial, citing that the delay decision is due to emergency measures due to coronavirus.

Specifically, the Supreme Court states that “the legal and factual issues, which were dealt with, were simply and not particularly difficult, while the temporary suspension of the work of the country’s courts, arising after the discussion of the appeal request, due to the adoption of extraordinary measures to protect the public health from the risk of the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19) created for extraordinary and unforeseen reasons, mainly, after the lifting of the temporary suspension, an accumulation of pending cases in the court of the Supreme Court and its serving judges”.

Finally, the Supreme Court ruled that “the court, assessing all the facts of the case, considers that the above period of time satisfies the requirements of the “reasonable duration” of the trial, in the sense of articles 1 and 5 paragraph 1 of the law 4239 /2014 and at the same time the requirements of the “reasonable period” in the sense of the ECHR”.