Decision of the Regional Court in Warsaw 24th Civil Division of 20th April 2016
XXIV C 554/14

1. It is of no significance from the point of view of a decision on group membership that entities who join the group having concluded agreements on the grounds of different Insurance General Terms and Conditions than entities covered by the statement of claims, or the lack of indication of the Insurance General Terms and Conditions on the grounds of which the agreement was concluded. As mentioned above, everyone, i.e. both heretofore and new members of the group derive their claims from the fact of existence of a contractual clause for the defendant constituting the grounds for collecting a redemption fee. The fact of the existence of such provisions is confirmed by the contents of the agreements concluded by group members with the defendant which indicate the method of calculation of redemption fees, as well as from the documents pertaining to insurance policy settlement after its dissolution. Therefore, the content of provisions questioned by the group members and, what follows, the fact of collection of redemption fees stems directly from the concluded agreements and is similar in relation to all the members.
2. The only criterion of a subgroup membership is the value of the claim which must be identical for all the subgroup members and must be substantiated by shared circumstances. Since liquidation fees of an approximate value were collected from members of specific subgroups on the grounds of similar or identical agreement provisions, then this issue undoubtedly constitutes the common circumstances of the case which substantiate allocating such entities to one subgroup.
3. Entities filing declarations on joining the group following a public announcement on commencement of the group proceedings are not limited by the value of pecuniary claims raised by the primary members of the group, and in consequence of these entities having accessed the group, the formation of new subgroups or reorganisation of those already existing is possible.
4. The defence of limitation of claims of all group members, as well as the charge of the lack of defendant’s enrichment constitute objection as to the merits which may not be considered at the present stage of the proceedings, i.e. at the stage of deciding on the group composition.