Full victory in fight on billboards
An Athens lawyer yesterday won a second compensation award in connection with the death of his son, who was killed in a road accident when his car hit an illegal advertising billboard on one of the capital’s main thoroughfares. An administrative court of first instance ordered the Greek State and the Papagos municipal authority to pay 587,000 euros each to Thanassis Tsiokos, whose son, Dimitris, was killed, aged 33, in February 2000. The court found that the billboard should never have been allowed on the narrow pavement of Katehaki Avenue, and that had it not been there Tsiokos’s life would have been saved. Both the municipal authority and the Public Works Ministry had issued permits for the construction. Last August, a court awarded Tsiokos 352,000 euros in compensation from the company that had erected the billboard and the Public Power Corporation, which linked it with the electricity grid. After his son’s death, Thanassis Tsiokos mounted a campaign for the removal of all the illegal billboards that line Greece’s roads.
