Order of the Court of Appeals in Warsaw V Civil Division dated September 28, 2022
V ACz 555/22

1. Claims of class members shall be based on the same legal basis if they derive from the issuance of the same normative acts and from the same omissions of the defendant.
2. In order to establish the membership of a member in a group, probability is sufficient.
3. Class proceedings, in which the demand for the “determination of liability” of the defendant is formulated, have the character of a special autonomous proceeding. The autonomy of this proceeding is determined primarily by the separate legal regime of the group proceeding, as well as its purpose and legal functions, as it is intended to conclude with a decision that constitutes a specific prejudicature for the resolution of future disputes involving a group of persons in the relevant individual court proceedings or as a result of the conclusion of appropriate settlements between the plaintiffs and the defendant.
4. Group proceedings do not examine the individual circumstances of each class member, as these will be evaluated in any subsequent individual trials. The issuance of a finding judgment in these proceedings concerning a large group of people is aimed only at establishing the defendant’s liability for a specific event. If, on the other hand, there are individual proceedings in which the verdict issued under Article 2(3) of the Law on the Investigation of Claims in Group Proceedings will be a prejudgment, it is only in these proceedings that the individual circumstances will be examined.
5. An action to establish the liability of the defendant in a case for a monetary claim arising out of a tort constituting a single event (Article 2(3) in conjunction with Article 1(1) and 1(2) of the Law on the Investigation of Claims in Class Proceedings) is also permissible in class proceedings when the premise of the occurrence of the damage and its amount depends on the individual factual circumstances of the individual members of the class.
6. The diversity of individual factual circumstances peculiar to individual class members (i.e., related to the occurrence of the damage itself, the exact mechanism of its occurrence and its magnitude) cannot constitute a reason for refusing to hear a lawsuit in class proceedings.

Court of Appeals in Warsaw V Civil Division in the following composition:

Presiding Judge:           SSA Bogdan Świerczakowski

after recognizing on September 28, 2022 in Warsaw at a closed session the case of the action of (…) Club sp. z o.o. sp. k. with its registered office in W. against the State Treasury – the Prime Minister, the State Treasury – the Minister of Health, the State Treasury – the Minister of Internal Affairs and Administration

as a result of the respondent’s complaint against the decision of the District Court in Warsaw of May 16, 2022, ref. no. II C 225/21,

decides:

1. dismiss the complaint;
2. leave the decision on the costs of the complaint proceedings to the Court of First Instance in the decision concluding the proceedings.