March 2022

Decision of the Piraeus Court of Appeal on the Suspension of the Auction of a Property with a First Offer Price of 2.300.000 Euro

The decision No 171/2022 of the Piraeus Court of Appeal of the Piraeus Court of Appeal was issued, suspending the electronic auction of a property with a First Bid Price of EUR 2.300.000, following a seizure by a Credit Institution. Following the seizure of the property in question, an appeal was brought under Article 933 of the Code of Civil Procedure on grounds relating to the validity of the payment order and the validity of the seizure procedure. The opposition was dismissed on the latter grounds and suspended on the former under Article 249 of the Code of Civil Procedure pending the outcome of the opposition to the order for payment. We appealed against that final decision and, at the same time, applied for a stay of proceedings so that the auction in question could be suspended until a decision on our appeal had been given. The application for interim measures was therefore immediately heard and within a few days a decision was issued which granted our request and suspended the auction until a final decision on our appeal was issued. The crucial legal issue was the following: whether a decision of the Court of First Instance on an objection to the attachment, by which the discussion of the attachment had been suspended for certain reasons, could be admissibly appealed. This is because there is no provision for an appeal against partially final judgments. In the present case, the Court of Appeal held that, in view of the objective cumulative nature of the grounds of appeal, the suspension of discussion of some of them did not render the judgment partially final and thus immune from appeal, but merely rendered it final on the grounds that were decided and non-final on those that were not. In particular, it ruled as follows: 'By this judgment, the court of first instance, after having considered the appeals before it, included in the judgment under appeal provisions which were final in respect of the appeal under Article 933 of the Civil Code and non-final in respect of the appeal under Article 632. There were therefore two separate proceedings before the Court of First Instance, one of which was finally decided and which is consequently subject to an appeal in its own right'.