Objective lawsuit accumulation

By Evangelia Petsa, 

According to article 218 Code of Civil Procedure:

«1. Several applications of the same plaintiff against the same defendant arising from the same or different cause, concerning the same or different object and based on the same or different reason can be joined in the same statement of claim

a) if they are not contradictory to each other,

b) if all of them are subject to the court where they are entered,

c) if they fall under the local jurisdiction of the same court,

d) if they are subject to the same type of procedure,

e) if their simultaneous adjudication does not cause confusion.

2. If several applications are joined without the conditions of paragraph 1 being met, separation is ordered upon application or ex officio and in the case of incompetence in terms of content or location, articles 46 and 47 are applied».

The provision regulates the issue of objective accumulation of lawsuits. The accumulation in question is opposed to the subjective accumulation of lawsuits (joint litigation), which is regulated in Articles 74 et seq. of the Code of Civil procedure. The objective accumulation is one of the most complex forms of lawsuits from the point of view of the object and is opposed by the other two basic forms (of a procedural nature) of accumulation of several claims, so that they can be adjudicated in a single procedure, i.e. the disjunctive accumulation, where several claims are joined in the same document, however, it is possible to award only one of them and the auxiliary accumulation, where the diagnosis of one of the presented historical bases and/or requests is related to (and presupposes) the rejection of another, main historical basis or another main request.

The objective accumulation of lawsuits constitutes, as a rule, a specialization of the principle of disposition and discussion of Article 106 of the Code of Civil procedure, establishing a right. An indirect obligation of objective accumulation of historical bases derives a) from the centralized system of grounds for objection against acts of execution according to Article 935 of the Code of Civil procedure and b) from the rule of the one-time exercise of remedies according to the Articles 514, 541, 555 of the Code of Civil procedure.

The right of the party to the objective accumulation of lawsuits is liberally established, in view of the principle of the economy of the trial, however, the procedural legislator establishes the following more specific conditions that must necessarily be met, so that the objective accumulation of lawsuits is possible:

1. the identity of the parties in the same capacity. It was rightly accepted that the admissible is piled up in the same document with the third party objection, the claimant or recognition action of ownership of movable or immovable property, which has been auctioned, in which case both the action and the opposition are examined.
2. the subjection of the accumulated requests to the substantive (due to the amount) competence of the court. This applies as long as it concerns claims valued in money. Otherwise, the accumulation is allowed, and the material competence is examined independently and separately for each claim. If a certain consolidated claim falls under the substantive jurisdiction of another court, it is ordered to be separated. The same solution is imposed when one of the claims falls under the exclusive jurisdiction of the magistrate’s court or the single-member court of first instance.
3. the subordination of all the requests submitted jointly to the same court, even if due to relevance pursuant to Article 31 of the Code of Civil Procedure.
4. the subjection of all cumulative claims to the same type of procedure. It is thus permitted in the same document to accumulate a small difference claim, accountability and distribution with a claim subject to the regular procedure. On the contrary, it has been accepted that they cannot be objectively accumulated due to a difference in the type of procedure, a difference arising from a car and a difference from the responsibility of the owner of the animal according to article 924 of the Civil Code.

In addition to the positive conditions above, the law also provides for two negative conditions for the objective accumulation of lawsuits:

1. the lack of a conflicting relationship between the complicitly listed historical bases and/or applications, so that no confusion occurs during their joint litigation. The contradiction is judged on the basis of substantive law. Those cumulative historical bases and/or claims, which cannot occur simultaneously based on the rules of logic and common experience, should be considered contradictory. Given this fact, the objective accumulation of affirmative and negative actions is not permissible due to a contradiction between them, since the first presupposes a universal infringement of ownership with deprivation of jurisdiction or possession, while the latter presupposes a partial infringement that does not reach the total loss of the prefecture.
2. the lack of risk of confusion from the simultaneous adjudication of multiple applications. Given this fact, it is unacceptable to pile up an action for recognition of co-ownership and distribution of real estate, which are subject to a different legal regime.

In the absence of any of the above conditions, the petition is not rejected as inadmissible (or invalid), but it is also ordered ex officio to separate the accumulated lawsuits, so that they can be tried in a separate trial and not just in a separate discussion. Therefore, upon violation of the obligation to separate or, similarly, upon an order to separate proceedings in violation of article 218 of the Code of Civil Procedure, the ground for appeal of article 519 paragraph 14 is not founded. Upon separation, each accumulated action now becomes independent.

References

• Κώδικας Πολιτικής Δικονομίας (Όπως κωδικοποιήθηκε με το Προεδρικό Διάταγμα 503/1985). lawspot.gr. Available here