Resolution of 7 Supreme Court judges on supplementary claims

DZP's Real Estate Practice has successfully represented the capital city of Warsaw before the Supreme Court in a case involving the following legal issue: Whether an owner-like possessor has the capacity to be party to a court action for remuneration for non-contractual use of real estate (articles 224 and 225 of the Civil Code) when it has given the real estate over for dependent possession.

The problem emerged in a reprivatisation case over land in Warsaw in which part of a pre-war building, i.e. apartments occupied by tenants, was restored in kind to the former owners' legal successors. The former owners of the real state then brought a claim against the capital city of Warsaw for payment for non-contractual use of a decree building (in the period before it was returned) and it was in these proceedings that the above legal issue emerged.

The Supreme Court began examining the issue in a three-person panel, but at a hearing on 22 June 2016 (III CZP 12/16) it decided to put the issue in question to a bigger seven-person Supreme Court panel, which on 19 April 2017 adopted the following resolution (III CZP 84/16): Use of real estate by an owner-like possessor which has given a thing for use to a tenant only involves collection of civil profits (articles 224 and 225 of the Civil Code).

This resolution upheld the stance taken in the case by the capital city of Warsaw, advised by Lech Żyżylewski and Piotr Gołaszewski from DZP's Real Estate Practice, specialising in, inter alia, reprivatisation cases.