Stanisław Drozd | In Principle

Two conditions must be met for a civil dispute to be resolved effectively: at the earliest stage of the case it must be precisely defined what is truly disputed between the parties, and the proceeding should be planned so that those issues can be focused on. If this can be achieved, the parties and the court can devote their energy and attention to the truly relevant issues. This will improve the speed and quality of judicial decisions, legal certainty, and security of commerce.

“Phoenixing” is a term coined to describe a situation in which stakeholders of an organization which becomes insolvent transfer its operations to a different entity, which continues them while ignoring the predecessor’s debts.

Genuine contractual disputes are always at least in some way about a gap in a contract. A dispute most often arises when parties have agreed to a meticulously drawn-up set of specific provisions and then in the course of performance a situation occurs which is not adequately addressed by those provisions. That is because the parties did not really have the situation in mind when drawing up the contract. As a result, the situation is either not addressed at all, or, more often, falls under provisions that were not really meant to deal with it.

A term that’s been crunched recently by lawyers and economists in Europe and throughout the world is the Uberisation of work. This refers to the phenomenon in the modern economy where members of various professions don’t work for employers as such but provide services to clients as independent contractors via a range of online platforms. The term takes its name from the well-known ride-hailing app, but similar platforms function in other industries.

Sport is an increasingly important sector of the economy. It is a significant contributor to GDP. It attracts massive capital investment and is a source of livelihood for many service providers and employees. Industrial relations in the sport sector are therefore subject to intensifying scrutiny, especially in jurisdictions where the sector is still developing and in the process of professionalisation. But sport-specific industrial relations also have certain peculiarities that make them intriguing in the discussion of employment market trends in the modern economy.

International arbitration is often referred to as an area of globalisation par excellence. It is an institution of global civil society. It is living proof that global society can freely govern itself, even in such vital areas as the adjudication of legal disputes, including those involving public and politically sensitive matters.

Sport is an important part of global civil society and it is best managed by that society’s institutions, in the form of non-government organizations of sufficient autonomy to be immune to the inherently corrupting political power of the state. But with freedom – with the “autonomy of sports” – comes responsibility.

One of the effects of the fourth industrial revolution is the uberisation of the economy – a shift from the classical economy in which businesses internally control and organize assets and activities to perform their functions, to the platform model where digital tools make it possible to coordinate independent individuals and external resources towards the same activity.

Earlier this year, the European Commission scored an important success in its campaign against intra-EU Bilateral Investment Treaties. The CJEU’s judgment in the Achmea case1 confirmed the Commission’s standpoint that a system that allows an investor from one EU Member State to challenge in international arbitration measures taken against its investment by another, host EU Member State, is incompatible with EU law.

Technological advance and resultant socio-economic “revolutions” have always triggered significant developments in international economic law.

The recent introduction into the Polish legal system of the possibility of applying for disclosure of evidence in the other party’s possession in cases alleging antitrust violations has stirred a debate over the treatment of evidence in Polish civil procedure. Should parties be given a broader right to demand production of evidence by the other side?

Whether witnesses can be asked leading questions is a vital issue for fair trials, but is treated inconsistently in Polish litigation practice. Inspiration can be sought from the rules that have worked for years in common-law jurisdictions.