Contrary to intuition, law is not the most important thing in civil litigation, despite its being a process of applying law. Facts matter most: they determine which provisions apply. Once that is settled, applying them is usually easier and less controversial. This is confirmed by the prevalence of factual-error grounds, rather than misinterpretation of law, in civil appeals.<\/p>\n
How does the court establish facts? Through parties\u2019 assertions and supporting evidence. Modern proceedings are generally adversarial, with equal parties before an independent arbiter, so parties primarily supply both.<\/p>\n
Time restrictions depend on the procedure and stage. The legislature intends them to promote determination without unnecessary delay.<\/p>\n
If breached, the court may, or sometimes must, disregard late assertions or evidence. Findings may then diverge from reality, potentially causing defeat. Conversely, an opponent\u2019s delay may benefit a party, especially if brought to the court\u2019s attention. Understanding the rules matters.<\/p>\n
They are scattered across provisions governing different procedures, making navigation difficult. Let us organise them.<\/p>\n
Statutorily, after claim and defence the presiding judge should hold a preparatory hearing and, unless settlement is achieved, prepare a trial plan with the parties. It must include evidential rulings and the order of evidence. Assertions and evidence may therefore be submitted until the plan is drawn up: Article 20512<\/sup> \u00a7 1. Logical enough.<\/p>\n In practice, this supposed rule is exceptional. Judges may omit preparation if it would not improve efficiency, and most never schedule it. Without it, submissions are allowed until the hearing closes, practically the end of proceedings: Article 20512<\/sup> \u00a7 2.<\/p>\n Complete freedom? Not necessarily. The judge may order preparatory pleadings and require all relevant assertions and evidence on pain of losing the right to rely on them later. Later material must then be disregarded. But there is an exception: substantiate that earlier submission was impossible, for example evidence did not yet exist, or the need arose later, for example an opponent began disputing a previously uncontested fact. See Article 2053<\/sup> \u00a7\u00a7 1\u20132.<\/p>\n The Code also contains separate procedures, commonly commercial proceedings, broadly disputes between businesses. Professionals face stricter rules\u2014generally, because exceptions abound here too.<\/p>\n The basic rule is simple: all assertions and evidence belong in the first pleading, the claim or defence. Later material is excluded unless earlier submission was impossible or need arose later. Even then, it must be submitted within two weeks of possibility or need arising, otherwise it too is late: Article 4585<\/sup> \u00a7\u00a7 1 and 4.<\/p>\n Exceptions concern unrepresented parties and individual entrepreneurs.<\/p>\n An unrepresented party need not supply everything in the claim or defence, but only when ordered, within at least one week. The judge may allow longer and may extend it on a timely application. The claimant should receive the order promptly after filing, the defendant with the claim: Articles 4585<\/sup> \u00a7 2 and 4584<\/sup> \u00a7 2. This covers all unrepresented parties, from sole traders to large joint-stock companies, since professional representation is generally optional.<\/p>\n This matters under time pressure, such as impending limitation. Filing personally and appointing counsel later can provide extra time to gather evidence.<\/p>\n An individual entrepreneur may request exclusion of commercial procedure. The court is bound, so ordinary rules apply, allowing submissions until closure subject to the restrictions above. An unrepresented party must request within one week of instructions about commercial rules; represented parties must do so in the claim or defence: Article 4586<\/sup>.<\/p>\n Most individual entrepreneurs would naturally avoid stricter rules. Why recognise they should not apply yet impose a short opt-out deadline? It resembles a poor legislative compromise: grant a privilege but set a trap for anyone who misses it.<\/p>\n Besides ordinary and preclusion systems, the Code has a hybrid.<\/p>\n Where a business faces a consumer, the consumer follows ordinary rules: until the preparatory plan or, without preparation, hearing closure. The business follows commercial-style rules and must generally submit everything in its claim or defence: Article 45815<\/sup>.<\/p>\n Effective since 1 July 2023, this was justified as accelerating cases. No explanation addressed Article 32 of the Constitution, guaranteeing equality and prohibiting discrimination for any reason, perhaps including business status, or Article 45(1), guaranteeing a fair public hearing without unjustified delay before an independent, impartial court. The Constitutional Tribunal may eventually need to answer.<\/p>\n Whatever the first-instance procedure, the appellate rule is the same. New facts and evidence may generally be raised, but the court may disregard them if they could have been raised below, unless need arose later: Article 381.<\/p>\n The key is \u201cmay\u201d. When will it, and when will it not? Is this free discretion, or are there situations requiring exclusion?<\/p>\n Despite the provision existing in its current form since 1996, no clear answer exists. Some decisions say appellate evidence should be exceptional and parties disciplined to submit everything below. Others say exclusion is exceptional because truth is paramount. Others effectively say nothing, for example:<\/p>\n The court may but need not admit new evidence. Its decision depends on each case\u2019s circumstances. It must supplement evidence on request where necessary to decide, yet may but need not disregard new facts and evidence first raised on appeal where Article 381 conditions are met.<\/em> Supreme Court order of 3 December 2024, I PSK 87\/24.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n So we do not really know. Caution suggests leaving no evidence \u201cfor later\u201d in first-instance proceedings.<\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n A single-article review cannot be exhaustive. Each mechanism has theoretical and practical problems that would require a book.<\/p>\n Every journey starts somewhere, and identifying a problem is the first step to solving it. I hope this helps anyone wishing\u2014or, more often, forced\u2014to navigate Polish civil procedure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Contrary to intuition, law is not the most important thing in civil litigation, despite its being a process of applying law. Facts matter most: they determine which provisions apply. Once that is settled, applying them is usually easier and less controversial. This is confirmed by the prevalence of factual-error grounds,\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":2920,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"294","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_seopress_news_disabled":"","_seopress_video_disabled":"","_seopress_video":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas_manual":[],"_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable_all":"","_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas":[],"iawp_total_views":0,"_djp_featured_image_mode":"full","footnotes":""},"categories":[{"term_id":294,"name":"Articles","slug":"articles-en","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":294,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":100,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":294,"category_count":100,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Articles","category_nicename":"articles-en","category_parent":0},{"term_id":292,"name":"Dispute Resolution","slug":"dispute-resolution-en","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":292,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":51,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":292,"category_count":51,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Dispute Resolution","category_nicename":"dispute-resolution-en","category_parent":0},{"term_id":291,"name":"General","slug":"general-en","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":291,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":153,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":291,"category_count":153,"category_description":"","cat_name":"General","category_nicename":"general-en","category_parent":0}],"tags":[],"djp_center":[],"coauthors":[238],"class_list":["post-4833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles-en","category-dispute-resolution-en","category-general-en"],"acf":{"djp_promote_now":false,"djp_promotion_days":7},"images":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/djp.pl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/pexels-jeremy-bishop-1260133-27585250-scaled-1-150x150.jpg","medium":"https:\/\/djp.pl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/pexels-jeremy-bishop-1260133-27585250-scaled-1-300x225.jpg","medium_large":"https:\/\/djp.pl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/pexels-jeremy-bishop-1260133-27585250-scaled-1-768x575.jpg","large":"https:\/\/djp.pl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/pexels-jeremy-bishop-1260133-27585250-scaled-1-1024x767-djp-web.webp","full":"https:\/\/djp.pl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/pexels-jeremy-bishop-1260133-27585250-scaled-1-djp-web.webp"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/djp.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/djp.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/djp.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/djp.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/djp.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4833"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/djp.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4833\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5481,"href":"https:\/\/djp.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4833\/revisions\/5481"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/djp.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/djp.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/djp.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/djp.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4833"},{"taxonomy":"djp_center","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/djp.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/djp_center?post=4833"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/djp.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=4833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Commercial proceedings<\/h2>\n
Proceedings involving consumers<\/h2>\n
Appellate proceedings<\/h2>\n
\n