Protecting the interests of the group (collective) in the jurisdiction of courts of common pleas and the Supreme Court in Poland

Abstract

The Act of 17 December 2009 on pursuing claims in class actions regulating court proceedings in cases which involve claims of at least 10 people, is a kind of novelty in Polish law. Undoubtedly, it is a legal act improving and modernizing Polish civil proceedings. However, one should pay attention to new developments and the lack of their clarification, and therefore to the importance of already issued judgments of the Supreme Court. For this reason, existing jurisdiction on this subject has been presented and analyzed, which allows to precise the subjective scope, the term and extent of the unification of claims, as well as the concept and requirement of a representative of the collective. Without any doubts, the practice, which starts to shape, as indicated on the example of jurisdiction, will allow to clarify the scope of the subject and object of the Act. The ability to limit the claims for liability of the defendant has, without any doubts, a very important role in functioning of the class action, because the unification of pecuniary claims is in practice very difficult. Past court decisions show that unification should be understood as occurrence of a members’ request for the generically same forms of protection. Many practical problems are also raised by the concept of the representative of the collective, and the way, in which the collective should choose one.