Case law > Decision of the Regional Court in Warsaw 3rd Civil Division of 29th January 2014

Decision of the Regional Court in Warsaw 3rd Civil Division of 29th January 2014
III C 1024/13

  1. The basis for assessing the consumer nature of claims has to be their source – contracts, in which the group members acted as consumers. Persons who signed – not in the scope of theirs business activity – contracts with the housing cooperative on building or buying rights to the flats and parking places – are consumers.
  2. The situation of group members should be identical at a glance and cannot require the hearing of evidence at the preliminary stage of the proceedings, when the general premises of group proceedings admissibility are examined. Claims of group members are not based on a common factual basis, if the hearing of evidence should be conducted differently in respect to some of as opposed to the other group members.
  3. Provisions concerning group proceedings emphasize the status of a group representative as a sui generis agent, who acts in his own name but in favour of the group. A representative is obliged to return everything to the group members that he or she gained for them while performing the duties of a group representative. If the group members incurred costs of professional legal representation in proceedings handled in favour of them, they are entitled to reimbursement if the judgement awarding costs to the claimant is issued.
  4. In group proceedings it is necessary to distinguish between claimant in the formal and substantive meaning. Although a court decides about the legitimacy of the substantive claims of the group or subgroup members, and by allowing the claims it indicates the amounts due to the group or subgroup members, and though judgement in that regard is an enforcement title, there is the only claimant in these proceedings, and it is the group representative. Although the group or subgroup members may be heard as parties, none of them are parties to the proceedings.
  5. Since group or subgroup members are not parties to group proceedings, it is impossible to reject a statement of claims in relation to them. The court’s prerogative to exclude someone from the group appears after the validation of decision on the admissibility of group proceedings, at the stage when new persons are joining to the case. Before that moment, the court is not entitled to modify the group’s composition.
  6. In group proceedings, it is inadmissible to partially reject a statement of claims, in relation to some group or subgroup members. The claim – in its procedural meaning – is one, adjudged with the claimant – the group representative. There are no grounds for division of this claim and for its partial rejection.

The decision was reversed by the decision of the Court of Appeals in Warsaw of 21st November 2014, file ref. no. VI ACz 4250/14.