As personal differences among individuals increase significantly, it often happens that within the context of a confrontation/disagreement, a person’s character is genuinely insulted, and their reputation is diminished in the eyes of the community. The question is how the law addresses these behaviors. Let’s take a detailed look at when an insult to a person’s character can establish a right to compensation through a lawsuit, as well as the various forms it can take (sexual harassment, defamatory libel) where provisional measures can also be applied.

1.What does the concept of personality include?

It is a generally vague legal concept that must be specified each time according to the needs of the circumstance. Indicatively, it includes a person’s life/physical integrity/health, honor/reputation/dignity, private life and sphere of privacy, and the free development of their own personality. Very important is also the ability of the individual to use public goods and environmental resources, which constitutes a particular manifestation of their personality. This means that when some aspect of those mentioned is insulted, it is a general violation of the right to personality.

At the same time, a common case of insult to a person’s personality is when torts are committed—civil law offenses that can establish a right to compensation in favor of the affected person. A classic case is the infliction of bodily harm by one person on another, which can not only result in a criminal complaint to impose a penalty on the perpetrator but also allows the victim to file a lawsuit to claim compensation not only for the damage suffered but also for the diminution of their image/reputation due to the incident.

It has also been judged by Greek courts that the right of an individual to enjoy public communal goods, if violated, can establish an insult to their personality. For example, if someone has had a view of the sea from their home’s balcony for years, and a building with excessive height is constructed in front of their house, it can establish an insult to the personality of the long-term resident who is now deprived of the necessary viewing passage to the public space.

2.Do companies/enterprises have a right to personality?

Correspondingly to what was mentioned above, it is accepted that companies, associations, etc. also have a right akin to personality like natural persons. Specifically,they have the right to their intellectual creations, industrial inventions, business secrets, etc. These are specific manifestations, which are protected independently by law through compensation lawsuits and criminal provisions for violators.

Nevertheless,they also have a commercial reputation/presence in the business world and with the clients they transact with. This means that if the reputation of a company is insulted with defamatory claims, the entity can have the same legal protection as a natural person when their personality is insulted. This protection will be examined in detail immediately below.

In practice, of course, all the above are secured in the contracts signed by companies with their clients/suppliers/partners. The most important of these is the ‘good faith clause,’ based on which the contracting party with the enterprise must not disclose business secrets, work methods, or anything else that could harm the entity’s reputation, market position, and collaborations with other companies or entities.

3.What form of legal protection is available?

If an insult to a person’s personality is established, then in civil law, the affected party has the following options:

• They can file a lawsuit to stop the insult to their personality (e.g., retract the defamatory statement against them).
• The lawsuit may include a request to prevent the insult from happening again in the future, provided it is likely/certain that the perpetrator will insult the victim’s personality again.
• Naturally, it can also include a claim for compensation for the damage suffered by the victim from the insult, but in this case, the legal conditions for liability from a tort must be met.
• The lawsuit may also include a claim for moral damages suffered by the victim due to the insult to their personality through appropriate compensation.
• If the insult to personality was committed by multiple persons, the victim can file a lawsuit against all jointly or against each individually if the proportion of each perpetrator’s responsibility is clear from the start.
• To secure the victim’s claims, they may file a petition for provisional measures against the perpetrator, as mentioned in another text.

4.What applies at the European level?

In many cases, Greek law may not be sufficiently clear regarding the protection of the right to personality. For this reason, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has been in effect since 2016, which specializes in protecting an individual’s personal data from processing and similar uses.

More specifically, the Regulation stipulates that everyone should be informed if/how their personal data will be used by data recording systems (e.g., workplace cameras and data recording systems). Therefore, they must provide their consent for the processing of their personal data, and if this consent is not given, the data must not be stored, and if they have been stored, they must be deleted as soon as possible.

Furthermore, if a person has given their consent for the processing of their personal data, the processing must be done for lawful purposes, and the personal data should not remain in the recording system for an excessive period—they should be deleted after a reasonable time if their retention is no longer deemed necessary. Related to the above is the “right to be forgotten,” meaning the right of a person who was once in the public eye for various reasons to request the deletion of their personal data from the relevant entities (e.g., from a Google listing), if there is no longer a legitimate interest in the specific facts, and a long period has elapsed, causing only harm to the person due to the retention of their data by these entities.

5.Are there reasons for which the insult to personality is ‘forgiven’?

Greek courts have established a list of unwritten rules, which, if met, do not constitute an insult to the victim’s personality, and therefore, the victim is not entitled to legal protection. Thus, the law considers that personality:

• Is not insulted when the victim consents to the insult (e.g., someone verbally abuses another, and the victim forgives the perpetrator).
• Is not insulted when it occurs due to self-defense (e.g., someone physically/verbally attacks another, and the latter responds to fend off the attack, always maintaining the necessary measure).
• Is not insulted when the victim assumes the consequences of their social actions (e.g., participating in high-intensity and dangerous sports events).
• Is not insulted during medical procedures, provided they have been conducted according to ethical standards and the patient has been informed of the entire process beforehand.
• Is partially not insulted when the victim themselves has contributed to the insult to their personality/property damage (e.g., in a traffic accident where the victim, a motorcycle rider, was not wearing a protective helmet).

6.Is personality insulted in cases of sexual harassment?

Given the increasing frequency of this phenomenon, many people wonder if they can take legal action in such cases. The answer is yes, they certainly can, but a distinction must be made to avoid confusion. Even the omission of promoting a person in the workplace (if the conditions for promotion are met and the person is unjustifiably overlooked) can constitute an insult to the employee’s personality.

Firstly, the victim of sexual harassment can file a complaint to initiate criminal prosecution against the perpetrator so that the latter is convicted if the court’s decision is favorable. This decision of the criminal court can also be used as evidence in the compensation trial later in the civil court, where the victim will seek compensation for the positive and negative damages suffered.

Alongside the above, the victim can also file an application for provisional measures against the perpetrator (which many people mistakenly refer to as ‘restraining orders’), requesting the court to prohibit the perpetrator from approaching the victim within their home/workplace/even their children if they were previously spouses/partners, etc. Therefore, each case of sexual harassment also carries a stigma of reducing the moral value of the person, and thus constitutes an insult to their personality. The victim can also claim compensation for moral damage for the harm that is not covered by ordinary compensation.

7.Does the same apply to defamation?

As mentioned in another text about the new Penal Code today, defamation as an offense has become quite strict. Specifically, all the reasons that the perpetrator could invoke to avoid (criminal) conviction have been abolished, even if it was proven that the offense of defamation was committed. Thus, the (legal) defense of the perpetrator against the charge of defamation is limited, whereas in the civil court, when sued for insulting personality, they have more defenses to propose and generally a better legal framework of protection.

However, not all cases of defamation also constitute an insult to the victim’s personality. A common case is when the defamation committed was not the decisive factor for the reduction of the victim’s honor/reputation, but other events may have intervened. For example, the (false) fact of defamation was already known in the victim’s social circles, and therefore the victim’s reputation had already been damaged before the defamation was committed by the perpetrator.

However, it is not necessary for someone to have been convicted by a criminal court for defamation for the civil court to find an insult to the victim’s personality. It should be noted that the three types of courts in Greece (civil/criminal/administrative) operate independently of each other, and therefore the decisions of one do not necessarily bind the other. For instance, it has been ruled that the victim did not suffer an insult to their personality and is not entitled to compensation from the civil court, despite the perpetrator being irrevocably convicted by the criminal court for defamation.

8.How is moral damage awarded in lawsuits for personality insult?

The awarding of moral damage by the court is a classic request in lawsuits for personality insult. The law establishes certain conditions for this claim. Specifically:

• The claimant is only the person who suffered an insult to their personality, professional reputation, personal life, or any kind of beliefs they may express as an individual.
• There are no specific criteria by which moral damage is determined in a certain and definite way=the circumstances of the insult, the age of the victim, the education of the perpetrator, and the family environment of each are taken into account.
• As a result, the amount awarded by the court as moral damage to the victim cannot be reviewed by the Supreme Court if an appeal is made against the decision for a legal error.
•  If the victim believes that the amount awarded as moral damage is insufficient and the circumstances have changed in the meantime, they can file a new lawsuit against the perpetrator, requesting the award of additional amounts as moral damage due to the change in circumstances.
• A basic condition for awarding moral damage to the victim is that they suffered additional harm from the insult to their personality, which cannot be covered by the compensation initially awarded by the court.

9.Is a defendant’s personality insulted?

A fundamental right of every person accused of one or more criminal acts is the presumption of innocence. This principle means that every person is presumed innocent until proven guilty by an irrevocable court decision. In Greece, such a court is the Supreme Court,as only when an appeal is rejected or the deadline for filing an appeal passes, does the decision become final, and the presumption of innocence no longer applies (assuming the decision was a conviction).

Therefore, during the first and second degrees of jurisdiction, it is prohibited for judicial bodies to make statements that could imply the guilt of the accused without solid evidence, as these statements could create unwarranted doubts without reason. Even if the accused is later acquitted or the lawsuit against them is dismissed, there will always be derogatory comments written during the trial that could influence public perception.

Consequently, a defendant who is acquitted by a final decision can claim an insult to their personality and file a lawsuit (as previously mentioned) against those responsible for making derogatory or slanderous statements during the trial. In such cases, the crime of defamation is often committed, so the (former) defendant can also cite this legal basis in their lawsuit.

10.How are judicial decisions regarding personality insults executed?

Suppose someone insults another person’s personality, and the latter wishes to seek legal protection. In this case, the victim has the following legal options (apart from provisional measures):

• They can file a lawsuit in civil courts, requesting that the insult be stopped and not repeated in the future.
• For the second request of the lawsuit, the victim can ask for the perpetrator to be sentenced to a monetary penalty or personal detention for each violation of the obligation to respect the victim’s personality.
• The monetary penalty is determined by the court and can be up to 100,000 euros, while personal detention can be up to 1 year. The monetary penalty is collected directly by the person who filed the lawsuit and not by the state.
• If the victim did not include such a request for the omission of the insult in their lawsuit, they can apply to the court to include it later in the judicial decision that was initially issued in the dispute.
• For each new violation by the perpetrator, the victim must file a lawsuit in court to verify the violation and collect the monetary penalty set accordingly.
• Therefore, at least two court decisions must be issued in total: one that includes a provision for omitting the insult to the personality in the future and another for diagnosing the violation and enforcing the monetary penalty.
• For the above court decisions to be enforceable against the perpetrator, they must be final: an appeal and opposition to a default judgment must have been filed and rejected, or their deadlines must have passed without action.

Next to the client and his needs.

Athina Kontogianni-Lawyer

The above does not constitute legal advice, and no responsibility is assumed for it. For more information, please contact us.