Doggy paddle a costly affair
A university professor who went all the way to the Supreme Court to secure 300 euros in damages from a fellow-bather who insisted on swimming with her dog has finally won his four-year fight, a report said yesterday. The country’s highest civil and criminal court based its decision on a ministerial decision of 1978, which forbids pet owners from bringing their animals to the beach and letting them take a dip, according to the Sunday Ethnos report. Overturning a lower court decision, judges ruled that the ban applies to all bathing areas, not just pay-beaches, as the dog’s owner had contested. The academic’s – his name was not made public – four-year legal battle was sparked by the refusal of a woman at a public beach under his Sounion holiday home to remove her lapdog from the sea on grounds of hygiene. The man then called in Lavrion port authority officers, who advised the woman that she was in the wrong, and sued the bather, when she continued to hold out, for «personal affront and mental anguish.»
