- However, the application of Article 417 of the Civil Code, as in effect prior to September 1, 2004, must take into account the Constitutional Court’s judgment of December 4, 2001, SK 18/00 (OTK 2001, No. 8, item 256), which ruled that Article 418 of the Civil Code is incompatible with Article 77(1) of the Polish Constitution, and that Article 417 of the Civil Code, understood to mean that the State Treasury is liable for damage caused by the unlawful action of a state official in performing an act entrusted to him, is compatible with Article 77(1) of the Polish Constitution. The underlying premise of this judgment was that the indicated provision of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland establishes a norm that ensures everyone’s right to compensation for damage caused by the unlawful action of a public authority. However, the content of Article 77(1) of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland is so vague that it does not provide a basis for deriving civil law claims from it. Therefore, it is reasonable to indicate Article 417 of the Civil Code in conjunction with Article 77 of the Polish Constitution as the legal basis.
- The compensation claim that arises on the part of shareholders in the event of loss of share value due to bankruptcy is a lucrum cessans type of compensation claim, i.e. compensation for loss of the right to dividends. Shareholders, as a result of the bankruptcy (and consequently, during the bankruptcy proceedings), have (theoretically) lost their right to dividends. By contrast, the loss of share value is de facto damage to the company, not to the shareholders. The legal construction of the joint-stock company and the resulting indirect participation of the shareholder in its activities thus determine, among other things, that the damage caused to the company cannot at the same time be considered a damage suffered by the shareholder.
The District Court in Szczecin, 1st Civil Division, composed of:
Presiding Judge: SSO Joanna Kitlowska-Moroz
having recognized on December 21, 2021 in Szczecin at a closed session in group proceedings
the case of the action of K. P. (1) against (…) for payment
- dismisses the claim;
- refrains from charging the plaintiff with the costs of legal representation due to the defendant;
- charges the plaintiff with 100% of the unpaid court costs, leaving their detailed settlement to the court registrar.
District Court in Warsaw XXV Civil Division composed of:
Presiding Judge: SSO Anna Pogorzelska
having examined on July 7, 2022 in Warsaw at a closed session the case of a class action brought by the District Consumer Ombudsman in the District (…) against (…) Joint Stock Company with its registered office in W. for payment
to determine the composition of the class
decided:
to deny the status of a class member to the following persons: A.S., T.R., S.J., M.N., L.N., H.J., K.P., M.M., A.B., M.F., R.W., J.W., E.C., A.S., K.F., G.N., W.D., G.Ż., F.K., K.W.
- In class proceedings, an action to establish the liability of the defendant in a case for a monetary claim arising from an act constituting a single event (Article 2(3) in conjunction with Article 1(1) and (2)) is also permissible in a situation where the premise of the occurrence of the damage and its amount depends on the individual factual circumstances of the individual members of the class. The Court is of the opinion that the purpose of this stage of the proceedings was in no way to examine the legitimacy of the claim made on the grounds of the defendant’s liability for damages. Indeed, it is not permissible for the Court at the stage of preliminary examination of the admissibility of the examination of the claim to refer directly to the assessment of the merits of the claim in the form of conducting evaluative considerations on the circumstances justifying the existence and type of, for example, a causal link between the plaintiffs’ damage and the defendant’s behavior.
- In addition, attention should be drawn to the need for a purposive interpretation of Article 1 of the Law on the Pursuit of Claims in Class Proceedings. Undoubtedly, the intention of the legislator was to make it easier (and not more difficult) for consumers, or persons who have suffered damage in connection with a dangerous product or a tort, to pursue their claims. Thus, the interpretation of the provisions of the Law on the Pursuit of Claims in Group Proceedings should be made in such a way as to facilitate the pursuit of such claims by group members.
District Court in Warsaw XXV Civil Division composed of:
Presiding Judge: SSO Krystyna Stawecka
after recognizing on April 27, 2022 in Warsaw at an in camera session pursuant to Article 15zzs1 of the Act of March 2, 2020 on special solutions related to the prevention, prevention and combating of COVID-19, other infectious diseases and crisis situations caused by them (Dz. U. of 2020, item 1478) in group proceedings
of the case brought by A. G. (class representative) against the State Treasury – Council of Ministers, Minister of Health, Minister of Internal Affairs and Administration for determination (on the admissibility of group proceedings)
decided:
to hear the case in group proceedings.
- Since the legislator has provided for separate bases of liability for aiding and abetting (benefiting from the damage caused by another person), it means that the act of the helper (benefiting from the damage) has been taken out of the general regulation of liability for one’s own act, provided for in Articles 415 and 416 of the Civil Code.
- In accordance with the model adopted by the Polish legislator in the provision of Article 361 of the Civil Code, the perpetrator of the damage is liable only for the normal, and not for all, consequences of an act or omission, whereby “the normal consequences of an act or omission are considered to be those that usually occur under the circumstances.”
- Aider liability is merely derivative of the liability of the wrongdoer. Therefore, the basic condition for accepting liability for aiding and abetting is to show that the tort liability of the principal perpetrator is justified.
- It follows from the very construction of the liability of an aider that in order to be “aiding and abetting to cause damage” one must include with consciousness the tortious act in the commission of which the aider would participate. If there is no willfulness understood in this way, any acts or omissions of the helper are only an element of the facts leading to the damage, but are not acts to which the legal system attaches liability for damages.
- The professional duty of banks to act with special care relates to the protection of funds entrusted to the bank by the account holder, and inherently involves contractual liability.
District Court in Warsaw XXV Civil Division composed of:
Presiding Judge: SSO Krystyna Stawecka
Judges: SSO Anna Blażejczyk, SSO Tomasz Gal
after hearing on July 17, 2019 in Warsaw a case brought by K. P. acting as a representative of the class against (…) Bank (…) S.A. W. for payment,
- dismisses the action;
- leaves the decision on the costs of the trial to the court registrar, indicating that the defendant won the case in 100%.
- In order to qualify claims for class proceedings, they must be averaged, which the plaintiffs did both in the lawsuit and its modification. This is because the lack of such averaging of claims would result in undermining the point of group proceedings at all, since the court would have to examine in detail and individually the case of each injured party in order to determine the actual value of his claim, which it can just as well do in individual proceedings. On the other hand, one of the benefits of group proceedings is that the court examines the circumstances of the case collectively with respect to all members of the group, so that the proceedings can be conducted more quickly and efficiently.
- The case law is unanimous in emphasizing that damage in the form of lost benefits must be demonstrated by the injured party with such a high degree of probability that, in light of life experience, justifies the assumption that the loss of expected benefits actually occurred. From damage in the form of lucrum cessans, it is necessary to distinguish the concept of potential damage, by which is meant “the loss of the chance to obtain a certain material benefit.” The difference is expressed in the fact that in the case of lucrum cessans the hypothesis of loss of benefit borders on certainty, while in the case of eventual damage the probability of loss of benefit is much lower. It is assumed that the eventual damage is not compensable.
- The construction of the provisions on abusive clauses does not allow the performance of the so-called reduction that maintains the effectiveness. Therefore, it is not possible to correct an abusive contractual provision, that is, to change its content in such a way that the provision no longer constitutes a prohibited provision.
- The mere fact that the claim is asserted in a group proceeding does not exempt from proving the fact and amount of damage suffered individually with respect to each member of the groups and subgroups. In fact, such a basis (…) can not be used as Article 2(1) of the U.d.p.g. The disposition of this provision is addressed to the plaintiff and relates to the manner in which the claim is formulated, not to the court obliging it to “lump sum” amounts awarded. Moreover, any “lump-sum” compensation would be tantamount to the introduction of a contractual penalty unknown in the legal relationship between the parties. The allowance of the claims of the individual members of the class was therefore conditional on proving in the course of the proceedings that they had actually suffered damages, in an amount at least equivalent to the damages claimed in the proceedings. There is no room here for any “estimated” amounts to make up for the damage they suffered.
District Court in Warsaw, III Civil Division, composed of:
Presiding Judge: SSO Grzegorz Chmiel
Judges: SSO Joanna Bitner, SSO Ewa Jończyk
after hearing on April 4, 2019 in Warsaw in group proceedings the case of the claim of K. K. (1) – the representative of the group and group participants:
(…)
against the Housing Cooperative (…) with its seat in W. for payment:
- dismisses the claim in its entirety;
- awards the amount of PLN 21,617 (twenty-one thousand six hundred and seventeen) against K. K. (1) in favor of the defendant Housing Cooperative (…) with its seat in W. as reimbursement of legal costs.
- Class proceedings have a number of significant differences from ordinary civil proceedings. First of all, the course of the proceedings, the prerequisites for the admissibility of the proceedings and the scope of civil cases that can be recognized in group proceedings, the formation of the subject party, the rules for determining the remuneration of an attorney, the specific requirements for the content of a lawsuit, as well as a number of formal differences related to the conduct of group proceedings are different. All these differences mean that it is not possible to apply directly all the provisions of the Civil Procedure Code that have not been excluded by the provision of Article 24(1) of the AIA. This leads to the conclusion that also to proceedings initiated before June 1, 2017, the provisions of the Civil Procedure Code should be applied accordingly.
- The provision of Article 24(1) of the U.S.D.P.G. has never excluded the application of Article 193 of the Code of Civil Procedure, despite its several amendments. In view of the importance of this provision, the exclusion from application of neighboring provisions, i.e., Articles 194-196 of the Code of Civil Procedure, and the lack of changes in this regard when subsequent amendments were made, it should be considered that this was a conscious decision by the legislator. Nor does the application of this provision definitively exclude the distinctiveness of group proceedings. Therefore, it should have been assumed that, in principle, the modification of the action recognized in the class proceedings is permissible.
- (3) The law does not provide for a specific procedure for resolving the issue of admissibility of the inclusion of new claims in group proceedings. As a result, the provisions relating to the claims filed in the lawsuit should be applied accordingly.
District Court in Warsaw XX Commercial Division, composed of:
Presiding Judge: SSO Katarzyna Kisiel
Judges: SSO Joanna Sieradz; SSO Łukasz Oleksiuk (spr.)
having examined on April 27, 2021 in Warsaw at a hearing the case from the action of (…) spółka z ograniczoną odpowiedzialnością with its registered office in W. against (…) with its registered office in N. (C.) for the protection of copyrights and related rights in group proceedings
decides:
to hear the case with respect to the new claims submitted by the plaintiff in the letter of September 23, 2019 in the group proceedings.
The District Court in Warsaw XX Commercial Division, composed of:
SSR (del.) Łukasz Oleksiuk
having examined on August 13, 2020 in Warsaw at a closed session the case of the action of (…) spółka z ograniczoną odpowiedzialnością with its registered office in W. against (…) with its registered office in N. (C.) for the protection of copyright and related rights in group proceedings
decides:
- Take up the suspended proceedings;
- discontinue the proceedings with respect to the following claims described in the lawsuit:
- described in paragraph 1 of the Statement of Claim, concerning prohibiting the Respondent from using – within the Service (…) (“Service (…)”, “(…)” or “(…)”), of which the Respondent is the administrator – the “System (…)” as defined in the Statement of Claim, which causes or leads to infringement of the Group members’ economic copyrights to, inter alia, the works indicated in Exhibit 35 to the Statement of Claim;
- described in paragraph 3 of the lawsuit, concerning an order that the Respondent, in the event that the Respondent obtains knowledge or credible knowledge that a particular file contains an unlawfully distributed work through the (…) Service, prevent access to all identical files, including copies of that file, even if the name of the copy is not the same as the name of the file, to all except the user who posted the file on the Service.
District Court in Warsaw, III Civil Division, composed of:
Presiding Judge: SSO Joanna Kruczkowska
Judges: SSO Joanna Bitner, SSR Andrzej Lipinski (del.)
having heard on January 16, 2020 in Warsaw the case from the action of A. R. – representative of the group against (…) Union (…) in W., for payment:
- awards from (…) Union (…) in W. to all members of the subgroups, in the present class proceedings, the amounts due to each of them – according to the list attached to the judgment;
- dismisses the action in the remaining part;
- charges the costs of the proceedings in their entirety to the (…) Union (…) in W., leaving the detailed calculation of these costs to the court registrar after the judgment becomes final, with the remuneration of the attorney representing the plaintiff to be calculated at 2 times the minimum rate.
LIST ANNEXED TO THE JUDGMENT OF THE DISTRICT COURT OF WARSAW DATED FEBRUARY 17, 2020. SYGN. FILE IIIC 603/15
(…)
– with all of the aforementioned amounts due with statutory interest for delay calculated from June 18, 2015 to the date of payment.
Presiding Judge: SSO Piotr Czerski
Judges: SSO Jolanta Szymanowska, SSO Agnieszka Wojnarowicz-Posłuszna
after hearing on June 7, 2019 in Lublin
the case from the action of J. O. (representative), acting in his own name and on his own behalf and on behalf of: [data of 25 members of the group]
against (…) Spółka Akcyjna with its registered office in L. in group proceedings for payment of
I. Award the amount of PLN 1,009,000.00 (one million nine thousand 00/100) from the defendant (…) Joint Stock Company, L., in favor of J. O. (class representative), with contractual interest at the rate of 8.8% per annum on this amount from November 28, 2016 to November 27, 2017, and statutory interest for delay from November 28, 2017 to the date of payment, determining that the following amounts are due from the awarded amount to individual members’ of the class (subgroups):
-
- In favor of (…) and (…) the amounts of PLN 118,000.00 (one hundred and eighteen thousand 00/100 zlotys) each with contractual interest at the rate of 8.8% per annum on this amount from November 28, 2016 to November 27, 2017, and statutory interest for delay from November 28, 2017 to the date of payment;
- in favor of (…), (…), (…) and (…) the amounts of PLN 85,000.00 (eighty-five thousand 00/100 zlotys) each, with contractual interest at the rate of 8.8% per annum on this amount from November 28, 2016 to November 27, 2017, and statutory interest for delay from November 28, 2017 until payment;
- in favor of (…), (…) and (…) the amounts of PLN 43,000.00 (forty-three thousand 00/100 zlotys) each, with contractual interest at the rate of 8.8% per annum on this amount from November 28, 2016, to November 27, 2017, and statutory interest for delay from November 28, 2017 until payment;
- to (…), (…) and (…) the amount of PLN 34,000.00 (thirty-four thousand 00/100 zlotys) with contractual interest at the rate of 8.8% per annum on this amount from November 28, 2016, to November 27, 2017, and statutory interest for delay from November 28, 2017, to the date of payment;
- In favor of (…) and (…) the amount of PLN 26,000.00 (twenty-six thousand 00/100 zlotys) with contractual interest at the rate of 8.8% per annum on this amount from November 28, 2016, to November 27, 2017, and statutory interest for delay from November 28, 2017, to the date of payment;
- in favor of (…), (…), (…), (…), (…) and (…) the amounts of PLN 17,000.00 (seventeen thousand 00/100 zlotys) each, with contractual interest at the rate of 8.8% per annum on this amount from November 28, 2016, until November 27, 2017, and statutory interest for delay from November 28, 2017 until payment;
- in favor of (…) and (…) the amounts of PLN 12,000.00 (twelve thousand 00/100 zlotys) each, with contractual interest at the rate of 8.8% per annum on this amount from November 28, 2016, to November 27, 2017, and statutory interest for delay from November 28, 2017 until payment;
- in favor of (…) and (…) the amounts of PLN 8,000.00 (eight thousand 00/100 zlotys) each, with contractual interest at the rate of 8.8% per annum on this amount from November 28, 2016, to November 27, 2017, and statutory interest for delay from November 28, 2017 until payment;
- to (…) and (…) the amounts of PLN 4,000.00 (four thousand 00/100 zlotys) each, with contractual interest at the rate of 8.8% per annum on this amount from November 28, 2016, to November 27, 2017, and statutory interest for delay from November 28, 2017, to the date of payment;
II. Award from the defendant (…) joint stock company with its registered office in L. in favor of the class representative the total amount of PLN 33,186.25 (thirty-three thousand one hundred eighty-six 25/100 zlotys) for the costs of the trial;
III. orders that the amount of PLN 524.35 (five hundred and twenty-four 35/100 zlotys) be collected from the defendant (…) Joint Stock Company, with its registered office in L., in favor of the State Treasury – the Regional Court in Lublin – as reimbursement of expenses;
IV. gives the judgment in point I the order of immediate enforceability.
Presiding Judge: SSO Piotr Czerski
Judges: SSO Jolanta Szymanowska, SSO Agnieszka Wojnarowicz-Posłuszna
after hearing at a closed session on March 22, 2019 in L.
the case from the action of J. O. (representative), [data of 25 class members]
against (…) Spółka Akcyjna with its registered office in L. in group proceedings for payment
decides:
determine the following composition of the group and subgroups:
- [data of 2 group members] (Group (…)),
- [data of 4 group members] (Group (…)),
- [data of 3 group members] (Group (…)),
- [data of 3 group members] (Group (…)),
- [data of 2 group members] (Group (…)),
- [data of 6 group members] (Group (…)),
- [data of 2 group members] (Group (…)),
- [data of 2 group members] (Group (…)),
- [data of 2 group members] (Group (…)).
