Author: igawojcik

The law firm Romanowski i Wspólnicy has obtained an unprecedented ruling ordering the reinstatement of judge Pawel Juszczyszyn in his ‘home’ – the civil department. The judge, after a long battle to return to adjudication, was ‘punitively exiled’ from the civil department, where he had tried for many years, to the family department. The ruling, issued yesterday by the District Court in Bydgoszcz as part of the so-called security measure, is intended to allow the judge to work in the civil department for the duration of the trial, which began with a lawsuit filed by Paweł Juszczyszyn and his attorney Prof. Michał Romanowski to establish the ineffectiveness of the transfer to the family department and for harassment.

The decision of the court in Bydgoszcz gives hope to other unlawfully transferred, harassed and victimised judges!
We continue to fight for independent courts, which are the guarantor of freedom of doing business in Poland.

“I will not be broken, I continue to do my job. The proceedings initiated by me and the lawyers helping me pro bono show that pressure makes sense. And with enough determination victory is possible.” Paweł Juszczyszyn

“This is yet another precedent-setting ruling that shows that the increasingly applied repression of harassment of judges, through their ‘punitive reassignment’ from their home departments – where they have adjudicated for years – to other departments, can be challenged.” Adv. Prof. Michał Romanowski

Read more in the article: HERE

Prof. Michał Romanowski, in an interview with a TVN24 journalist for Konkret24.tvn24.pl, comments on reports that the European Commission was to assess the deal to sell Saudi Aramco 30% of Lotos shares in terms of its safety for Poland:

“Lawyer and commercial law expert Prof. Michał Romanowski explains that the Commission, when analysing the merger of Orlen and Lotos, probably pointed out that with the merger of the two companies the market would be dominated by one entity. It therefore indicated the sale of some of the assets as a condition for granting approval for the merger. – In such a situation, it is important that the entity acquiring the assets actually takes control of them. So that there is no situation where the entity selling the assets actually retains control over them,’ says Prof Romanowski.
In the case of the agreement concluded by Orlen with Saudi Aramco, the essence was to give control over the Gdansk Refinery.”.

“Asked about politicians who insist that the sale of shares in the Gdansk refinery company took place under the control of the European Commission, Professor Michał Romanowski replies: – ‘Such statements suggest that the deal passed some test before the European Commission, only that this is not true.'”

“If Orlen had presented the situation fully objectively, it could have said that it was in the interest of the Polish state to give up control of some of the assets that were under state control in order to ensure state security. We are selling the refinery to make it safe. However, they are saying something different: we are merging to make it safer and still maintain control,” notes Prof Romanowski. In his opinion, however, the European Commission would not agree to such a solution.”.

Article available: here.

The current practice of applying the provisions regulating the form of conclusion and termination of employment contracts is inconsistent with the contemporary realities of business transactions. Nowadays, it is fully justified to assume that the notion “in writing” also includes actions of a written nature performed in documentary form, through electronic communication means (especially e-mail).

The issue of the manner of interpreting the notion ‘in writing’ on the basis of the provisions of the Labour Code is analysed by Przemysław Mazur, advocate, in the pages of the latest issue of the Labour Law Monitor.

The Collective Redundancies Act gives a significant degree of discretion as to which employees will be made redundant. However, this freedom does not mean arbitrariness. In a collective redundancy procedure, the employer should specify the criteria for selecting employees for redundancy. These criteria should be objective and fair,” writes legal advisor Przemysław Mazur in an article for prawo.pl.

Link to the article: here

Prof. Michał Romanowski comments for Gazeta Prawna on a high-profile corporate dispute concerning a listed company in an article by editor Marzena Sosnowska titled. ‘Violation of a shareholder’s personal rights. How is the company’s manager liable‘.

The essence of the legal problem boils down to the question of whether a manager of a public company can be held liable for the infringement of a shareholder’s personal rights mentioned in the company’s report.

Prof. Michał Romanowski:
“ESPI is used for the communication by the issuer’s management of information from the life of the issuer relevant to investors. Communicating information about a serious conflict whose venue is the general meeting of shareholders, and in particular when the general meeting […] becomes a kind of arena of struggle for control over the company, if the information is communicated in a reliable manner, is not only the right but also the duty of the management board. If there was even a fight at the general meeting, “competing” general meetings were held in parallel, security companies were hired, this is information that […] should be disclosed in the ESPI. This is because they have an impact on the decision to invest in the shares of such a company. […] I would not mix brutalised legal tactics aimed at achieving an effect regardless of the methods with the civil and constitutional concept of respect for human dignity. Unfortunately, on the Polish market of public companies we are still too often dealing with legal tactics straight from the ‘culture of Eastern law’, where mindless force has primacy over rational argument.”

At our law firm, values matter. The right to an independent court, free from the influence of politicians, is not only a fundamental human right, but also a condition for business freedom. That is why we are committed to defending the rule of law. Barrister Michał Romanowski notifies of a suspected crime committed by members of the current National Council of the Judiciary – the incitement of court presidents not to execute final and enforceable decisions of common courts. We encourage you to read the notice and the statement of Advocate Michał Romanowski. Content: Notice and Statement available at the links.

Congratulations to the Scholarship recipients of the Legal Solidarity Fund, which was established on the initiative of Professor Adam Bodnar, a member of the Chapter of the Henryk Wujec Civic Fund, and Ms Anna Frankowska, a lawyer, and funded by renowned law firms. The law firm Romanowski i Wspólnicy was the first to support the Fund with an amount of PLN 100,000, then the funders were joined by law firms: Deloitte Legal and the Deloitte Foundation, Domanski Zakrzewski Palinka (DZP), Linklaters, Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP and White & Case LLP.

We are confident that Dr Liudmyla Dubchak, Dr Nataliia Mushak, Dr Yustyna Samahalska, Dr Natalia Semchuk and Prof Oleksandr Sotula and their research projects will make a great contribution. The scholarship holders will conduct their research projects in cooperation with the University of Warsaw (Faculty of Law and Administration and Faculty of Management), SWPS University (Faculty of Law), Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan (Department of International Law and International Organisations) and the University of Lodz (Faculty of Law and Administration).

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