Abuse of procedural rights in Polish and European civil procedure law and the notion of private and public interest

Abstract

The article discusses the abuse of procedural rights in Polish and European civil procedure law and the notion of private and public interest. The issue of abuse of procedural rights is a category of applying the law. At the current stage of development there is no simple transposition of the issue of legal interest on the institution of abuse of procedural right; undeniably, the lack of current and real interest, with the assumption of fulfillment of other prerequisites, may be contemplated in categories of abuse of right by the court under ius dicere. In the Polish law it is not sufficient to analyse this phenomenon solely in the sphere of procedural locus standi and there shall be the interest in taking a specific step. There also shall be the awareness of the party taking the step as to its inadmissibility and intention to harm the other party, as e.g. in case of fictitious actions. In the European area it is additionally necessary to create methodology and general approach to abuse of right in European civil proceedings and finding compromising approach towards understanding of the notion of the interest in Roman and Germanic law systems. Because application and development of the law due to lack of procedural fairness and good faith is rather difficult to verify and to define, the advantage of adopting admissibility of a separate international institution of abuse of procedural right would lie in the possibility of applying a universal approach towards abuse of procedural right in all member states. Thiswould mean that each court of the member state would apply the same standard of the test. Finally, the alternative use of exclusively national concepts of abuse of procedural right cannot be continued. It can be assumed that confirmation of the existence of the abuse of European procedural right in a given case would require existence of objective and subjective factors.