On 14 April 2015, the Polish Constitutional Tribunal rendered a ruling that triggered a great commotion on the Polish market of banking services. The Tribunal declared Article 96 sec. 1 and Article 97 sec. 1 of the Banking Act – regulations constituting Banking Enforcement Title – as contrary to the principle of equality (case No P 45/12). In response to the judgment, the state legislator derogated this instrument from the Polish legal system with effect from 27 November 2015.
“Polish Private Law” is pleased to present a complete set of Polish Reports from the XVIII International Congress of Comparative Law, hosted in 2010 in Washington D.C. The publication of the electronic version has been carried out in cooperation with the Łódź University Press – for which we owe sincere gratitude. For materials from the XIX Congress in Vienna, see: https://polishprivatelaw.pl/xix-international-congress-of-comparative-law-in-vienna-complete-polish-reports/#more-6635
Civil Law Department at the Faculty of Law and Administration of the University of Warsaw invites everyone interested in private and company law to the open lecture of Prof. Klaus J. Hopt
The Civil Chamber of the Supreme Court of Poland referred its second preliminary question to the CJEU (following a previous one reported previously on Polish Private Law). This time it addressed issues of intellectual property protection, against the background of the 2004/48/EC directive of 29 April 2004 on the enforcement of intellectual property rights. The Court confronted this act with the domestic remedies in the case of copyright infringements, concluding that the possibility to award damages without ascertaining the real amount of loss, as set forth in the Polish regulation, is not compliant with the EU rules, excluding penal measures in these terms.
The Conference will be held on 15th October 2015 at the Faculty of Law, Administration and Economics University of Wrocław). Its aim is to discuss whether regulation presently in force in European Union Member States concerning liability for loss caused by defective products, as implemented under Council Directive of 25 July 1985 (85/374/EEC) on the approximation of the laws, regulations and administrative provisions of the Member States concerning liability for defective products, remains, after thirty years, an adequate legal response to the phenomenon of products brought to market that fail to ensure appropriate levels of safety for their users.
The discussion about provisions relating to the unilateral termination of contracts becomes controversial already at a terminological level. It has been noted, not only in Polish literature, that the terminology used in this field in various national laws is ambiguous and may be misleading (P.S. Atiyah, An Introduction to the Law of Contract, Oxford 1995, p. 398). The power to unilaterally bring a contract to an end may be defined as the right to terminate, withdraw from, cancel or rescind a contract. Certainly, the unilateral termination of a contract is not as uniform as could be sought-after. Thus, it is important to set out the terminological background before presenting the legislative framework for the unilateral termination of contracts under Polish law.
The Court adjudicated the cassation claim of the claimant, challenging the judgment of the Court of Appeals in Warsaw rejecting the claim of the claimant – a Sikh – alleging the infringement of his personal rights. During the security check, he demanded to be able to take off his turban in a secluded place without the presence of other guards, but this was refused by the officials in charge. Upon this ground he asserted the encroachment of his freedom of conscience and religion – and hence, an infringement of Articles 23 and 24 of the Civil Code of Poland (specifying the concept of personal rights and remedies in the case of their violation).
We are very glad to present the complete edition of Polish reports for the last year’s XIX International Congress of Comparative Law in Vienna (edited by Professor Biruta Lewaszkiewicz-Petrykowska). It contains studies covering different areas of Polish legal system – among them selected problems of private law, its interplay with fundamental rigths and questions of civil procedure. The material has been published by the Łódź University Press. Thanks to its courtesy we enclose below the full electronic version of the book.
In a judgment of 20 September 2013, II CSK 1/13, the Supreme Court addressed the problem of granting the sacrament of anointing the sick to a non-believer. The claimant was a patient at the Independent Public Clinical Hospital in the Cardiac Surgery Clinic. After the operation he was placed into a pharmacologically induced coma. Remaining in this state, he was granted the sacrament in question by a priest who was a chaplain contracted by the Hospital. The claimant learned about it while checking the medical documentation after leaving the hospital.
Art cannot exist without freedom. And where freedom exists, art experiments must be allowed – experiments more or less in line with expectations and what viewers of art are accustomed to. There must be an acceptance of searching, allowing not only for wandering the “dirt track” where nobody has ever seen art, along with scandals where art has long been present. However, everything has its limits. Even the freedom of art. For art, these flexible limits set out the aesthetic canons of the era and the boundaries of law. The aesthetic canons protect the sensitivity of art viewers, while the law protects other values, recognised by the law as more important than the freedom of creativity. If these canons and values are breached by art, then the boundaries within which it is allowed are described by law and set out by the courts of law.
