Decision of the Court of Appeals in ‎‎Warsaw 1st Civil Division of 18th February 2014
I ACz 22/14

1. The subject of the proceedings, also conducted in the specific manner of a group proceedings, is the procedural claim specified by the claimant. It is the claimant who decides what type and from what title he is deriving his claim, and what legal protection he is demanding in connection therewith. The object of the court is to assess the legitimacy of the claim within the limits indicated by the claimant. The derivation by the court of the demands (claims), not indicated by the claimant, even if they are possible to pursue, should have been deemed as inadmissible. Since, in accordance with the will of the claimant, the subject of the group proceedings is not claims for the protection of personal rights of the individual members of the group, then this statement should be binding for the Court. In the manner of the Act on the pursuing claims in group proceedings, the examination of the case on the protection of personal rights is inadmissible, but it is not inadmissible to examine a case in which such clams can potentially be pursued.
2. We are dealing with the same factual basis of the claims when there is a bond between the members of the group, based on the homogeneity of the legal event. For the substantiation of the commonality of the factual basis, it was sufficient to indicate the event in the form of the broadcasting of advertisements which were subsequently deemed to be an act of unfair competition. The Regional Court incorrectly questioned this opinion, erroneously deducing that such a factual basis of the claims would only be sufficient in the case, in which the claimant would seek the establishment of compensatory liability, and not compensation for damages. The issuance of a decision on the rejection of the statement of claims cannot be dictated by a content-related assessment of the submitted demand (the indication of the circumstances substantiating the scope of the damage by the claimants as well as the existence of a causal link between the event and the damage).
3. The Act does not indicate what the standardization is to consist in, but there is no doubt, that this is dictated first and foremost by reasons of procedural economics, the will to speed up the joint examination of the case.