Decision of the Court of Appeals in Łódź, 1st Civil Division of 29th November 2012
I ACz 1485/12

1. The subject metter of the statement of claims are not the claims of the individual group members for the payment, but only the prejudging of the principle of the defendant’s liability. The judgement, which is to be issued in the case, will fulfill the role of a precedent enabling the pursuit of claims for payment. In this situation, the estimation of the defendant’s potential proceeding costs must include the value of the subject of the proceedings, calculated uniformly for all of the group members, and not the value that is calculated separately for each of them. This is where the limit, established by the Court, of the possible costs of legal representation of the defendant (PLN 43,200) stems from.
2. In assessing the legitimacy of the defendant’s demand to secure the costs of the proceedings through the payment of a deposit by the claimant, one cannot lose sight of the stage, on which this assessment is made along with the aim of the above regulation. Without a doubt, the implementation of the regulation in the subject of the deposit for securing the costs of the proceedings was to constitute an effective barrier against abusing the institution of group proceedings. The defendant, in submitting such a motion, should, however, make plausible the fact that the initiation of the statement of claims against him is obviously groundless or that its consideration is highly improbable, therefore it carries the traits of “procedural barratry” and secondly, that the lack of establishing a deposit for securing the future claim on awarding the costs of the proceedings will impede or severely hamper their enforcement on the claimant.