Decision of the Court of Appeals in Warsaw 6th Civil Division of 21st March 2016
VI ACz 2448/15

1. In a situation in which the composition of a initiating group is shaped outside of the court proceedings, the issues pertaining to the internal organisation of this group are not regulated by the provisions of the Act on Pursuing Claims in Group Proceedings. Such entities, cooperating with each other, autonomously determine the content of the statement of claims, including the content of the raised claims, circumstances substantiating them, as well as motions for the taking of evidence, but also choose the group’s representative.
2. Declarations of group members on joining the group and consenting for a specific person to act in the capacity of the group representative are not a basis, autonomous and independent of the statement of claims, for the establishment of the object and admissibility of the group proceedings by the court; they are aimed at identifying members of the group.
3. It is admissible to refer in declarations on joining the group to the statement of claims in the scope of the indication of demands, circumstances substantiating the demand, circumstances substantiating participation in the group, as well as evidence.
4. Any substantive and procedural law effects of initiating a group proceedings arise on the date on which the statement of claims along with attachments is filed, hence a date on the declaration subsequently attached to the statement of claims is of no significance.
5. If declarations of members of the initiating group on joining the group is not attached to the statement of claims it should be considered as the lack of form of the statement of claims, rendering further examination of the case impossible and subject to removal under Article 130 par. 1 of the CCP CCP in conjunction with Article 24.1 of the Act on Pursuing Claims in Group Proceedings. Yet, such an omission does not constitute an immediate basis for the dismissal of the action.
6. A demand for ceasing to infringe on the author’s economic rights of group members by banning the defendant from using a file exchange system in greater detail defined in the statement of claims, resulting in or leading to an infringement of author’s economic rights of group members fits within the objective scope of a group proceedings.
7. There is no unambiguous bases to prejudge that preventative claims regulated in Article 439 of the CC may not at all be entertained in a group proceedings; this issue should be subject to the court’s assessment performed on the occasion of a content-related examination of the legitimacy of a class action.
8. A class action is suitable for pursuing homogeneous claims, with their source in one type of a legal relationship, even if they gave rise to different substantive law claims.
9. The requirement of the same or similar factual basis of the claim means that the factual basis of the claim does not have to be constituted by identical circumstances, but substantial similarity is considered to be sufficient.
10. Non-indicating by the claimant when the author’s rights of group members were infringed upon and non-indicating the fact that the defendant was notified of the infringements by each of the group members does not in itself prejudge the lack of identity of the factual basis of group members’ claims.
11. The need for the occurrence of a set of circumstances substantiating a specific legal relationship does not mean that the entirety of the case’s factual status is to be based exclusively on identical facts.
12. In light of Article 12 of the Act on Pursuing Claims in Group Proceedings, the claimant was only obligated to indicate circumstances substantiating the demands, but not all the circumstances of the present case.