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In his desperation to recover the hundreds of thousands of dollars he loaned to his former client, an NSW lawyer allegedly told her he hoped she would die and claimed the world “would be a better place”.
According to a recent NSW Supreme Court decision, solicitor Chris Eliopoulos allegedly told his former 71-year-old client, Halina Gilla Sher, that he hoped she would die and that he did not “give a s--t” about claims she had been hospitalised several times due to stress.
The text messages were sent in August 2023, just under two years after Eliopoulos loaned Sher $800,000 on the alleged condition the sum would be repaid alongside $135,000 in interest by December 2021.
Eliopoulos has yet to recover more than $500,000.
According to a police report filed in October 2023, Eliopoulos was charged with the offence of use carriage service to menace, harass or offend because he allegedly sent a number of concerning text messages to Sher between 1 January 2022 and 18 August 2023.
In addition to using explicit language, Eliopoulos allegedly berated her and called her several slurs, including that she was a “c--t”. Sher told police it made her feel “nervous, upset, threatened and intimidated”.
Justice Sarah McNaughton considered this police charge when she made the decision to set aside a default judgment in Eliopoulos’ favour. Due to Sher’s failure to defend herself in the original proceedings, Eliopoulos had been awarded a total sum of $1,848,109.
Sher claimed the correct defendant to the judgment should be her companies and she should “be permitted to make good that contention”.
In support of her application, Sher said she did not file a defence prior to the default judgment because of “personal and financial reasons” and due to the nervousness she felt after Eliopoulos’ alleged threats.
On review of Sher’s material, Justice McNaughton said she was of the view there was a “bona fide defence on the merits”.
“Whilst I acknowledge there is evidence going both ways in terms of who is the appropriate defendant, there is sufficient evidence to sustain a bona fide submission that the defendant is properly Sher’s company or companies, rather than her personally,” Justice McNaughton said.
While Sher was apparently well enough to compose certain business-related correspondence at the time of the default judgment, Justice McNaughton accepted her submissions into stress and ill health.
“Further, these factors, together with the deteriorating relationship with Eliopoulos which culminated in a criminal charge of harassment, provide a sufficient reason to account for the length of the delay,” she said.
According to the decision, Sher met Eliopoulos in August 2016 and the two would regularly address legal matters at Bondi Junction.
At the time of the loans, Eliopoulos said the coronavirus pandemic affected her businesses, U & G Properties and Aharon Investments, because her tenants struggled to make rent payments. She said she experienced further financial hardships when rates began to rise.
Sher claimed there was evidence Eliopoulos sued her personally for a vengeful purpose and referred to text messages in which he asked her to obtain family assistance to repay the debt, “and thus, in some sense, use the proceedings to extract collateral pressure to secure payment or to ruin [her] with bankruptcy”, as he had allegedly threatened to do.
Sher said that if Eliopoulos was truly sincere about the debt recovery, he would have sued the property companies as well.
Eliopoulos’ case was that Sher always maintained the debt was owed personally and at no time did she contend it was that of her companies.
The debt matter is ongoing.
The case is Eliopoulos v Sher [2025] NSWSC 115 (27 February 2025).
Naomi Neilson is a senior journalist with a focus on court reporting for Lawyers Weekly.
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