January 2020

Decision of the Athens Court of Appeal on Liability due to Transfer of Business

The decision of the Athens Court of Appeal No. 93/2020 has been published, in which our lawsuit against a Limited Liability Company to which our debtor company's clientele was transferred under article 479 of the Civil Code. A characteristic passage of the judgment: 'It has been proved that the clientele of the company named "...", i.e. the most important element of the particular business which ceased to operate, was transferred to the defendant, so that its transfer to the defendant constituted a transfer of its business to the defendant and that the defendant, in view of the circumstances under which the transfer took place, was aware of the general financial situation of the debtor company...'. This decision is special because it is one of the rare cases in our case-law where the liability of a franchisor of a business with only the franchisee-debtor's customers as the transferred asset is accepted.