The decision of the Piraeus Court of Appeal No. 223/2022 was issued, which annulled a payment order seeking a claim of approximately 800,000 euros, including interest. What is special about this decision is that the payment order was annulled on substantive grounds and therefore it was held that the claim in question, which is currently managed by a Servicer (Claims Management Company), does not exist. The court upheld the plea raised in relation to the debt ceiling introduced by the Debt Ceiling Act. In particular, it was accepted that mutual account agreements concluded before 2004 are subject to the law on debtor's liens (Law 3259/2004) if they have been terminated after 2004. Therefore, the limit of 3 times the amount of the debt applies and therefore, in order to identify the maximum amount of any bank claim, we proceed with the following calculation: we take as a basis the amount of the debt at the time of the last disbursement and multiply it by 3. We then subtract any payments that have taken place since the start of the mutual debt and the result is the maximum amount of debt that the credit institution can claim. Anything above this amount is automatically written off.
The crucial passage of the judgment reads as follows:'It is understood that the above statutory maximum permissible limit of three times the amount due applies to credit agreements entered into before the Act came into force (4.8.2004) and became due after the Act came into force, and in the case of a mutual account, on the date of closure of the account and termination of the agreement which took place after the Act came into force. [...] This is because, as stated in the above-mentioned major consideration, bank credits for which a mutual account was maintained that was closed and terminated after the entry into force of Article 39 of the Law. 3259/2004, as the parties agree in this case, are subject to the statutory adjustment of the debt, up to three times the amount of the debt as it stood at the time of the last disbursement of the account, without any prior request by the opposing debtor [...]. The total payments made by the opposing party to the defendant up to the closure of the accounts, which are evidenced by the extracts from its computerised accounts submitted and relied on, as agreed between them, amount to a total of 2. 844,707.45, which is far in excess of three times the amount of its debt calculated in accordance with Article 39 of Law 3259/2004, which amounts to EUR 1,038,892, which is the maximum amount of its debt permitted under the favourable redefinition'.
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