Decision of the Regional Court in Krakow, 1st Civil Division, of 20th May 2011
I C 1419/10

The decision was reversed in part (in the scope of point 2) by decision of the Court of Appeals in Krakow of 7^th December 2011, file ref. no. I ACz 1235/11. The thesis’ questioned by the Court are marked in italics.

1. In Article 1 section 1 (unlike in Article 2 section 3), the Act uses the term claim in the procedural meaning. Against the background of the Act, homogenous claims are claims arising from the same type of legal relationship. This does not mean sameness of specific standards constituting the legal basis of the specific claims (substantive law claims). The notion of homogeneity thus understood, litigation claims with their source in one legal relationship, even if various substantive law claims were to arise therefrom, should be recognised as homogenous.
2. A factual basis of the claim should be understood as the basic aggregate of facts constituting the basis for the arising of a contentious legal relationship and a specific claim. The scope of the factual basis does not extend to factual circumstances impacting the value, objective scope, or maturity of claims; these elements may, but do not have to be covered by the factual basis of the action.
3. The requirement of the same or similar (equal) factual basis does not mean the requirement for all the elements of the factual status to be the same or similar (equal) in the case of each claim. It is enough if there is an element common in the scope of all factual circumstances constituting the basis of the group members’ claims.
4. The defendants’ behaviours in a varying degree contributed to the bursting of the flood blank in Koćmierzów, and thus to the effect – damage to the group members’ assets, but they jointly constitute a single tort perpetrated by public authorities. The fact that not all defendants participated in the tort at specific stages thereof does not eliminate their joint and several liability for the damage.
5. The defendants’ tort is of complex nature, it consists of an aggregate of interrelated actions and omissions, distributed in time, which led to inflicting damage onto multiple entities. A statement that to adopt the precondition of commonality of the factual basis of the claims is necessary for all group members to derive their claims from the same action or the same omission or the same action and omission of the defendants and that each of the group members should seek claims for compensation of damage of the same type (only damnum emergens or lucrum cessans) does not deserve to be approved. As all claims of the group members’ arise from such a complex tort, then it should be assumed that they are based on the same factual basis and the group members share a bond arising from the unity of the event which resulted in the damage.
6. The criterion for separating cases in the frames of categories of claims arising from tort is the legal basis of claims. A group proceedings is admissible in the cases regarding claims pursued on the grounds of provisions of the Civil Code on tort, regardless of the type of events which the Act associates compensatory obligations with and regardless of the principle of liability.
7. Common circumstances of the case considered at the standardisation of claim values should be referred to the precondition of commonality of the factual basis (Article 1 section 1 of the Act). However, it is a notion of a meaning narrower than “the same or similar (equal) factual basis”.
8. The estimates of the costs of the proceedings are the necessary condition of the motion for security deposit, since the court in determining deposit value should bear in mind a probable total of the costs to be incurred by the defendant.