The HFHR program named “CourtWatch – The Court Observer” was launched at the end of 2004. The main goal of this project is to observe the functioning of courts, especially access to courts, the working habits of courts and judges, as well as the overall “friendliness” of the courts. The program’s fundamental objective is to examine the courts’ work and functioning, and to present the means of effectively benefiting from the transparency principle expressed in the Constitution. It is important to show that there are non-government organizations interested in the quality of the judges’ and courts’ work, and that they observe this activity. The objective is also to motivate students of law, who perform the court monitoring for this project.

2008 edition of the CourtWatch monitoring was devoted to commercial divisions of Polish courts. It was implemented in cooperation with and thanks to financial support from law firm DLA Piper. Editors of this report were Adam Bodnar and Maria Ejchart. Selected chapters in the report were written by Maciej Bernatt, Katarzyna Zdun and Jakub Michalski.

The goal of this edition was the professional and complex monitoring of all the commercial courts in Poland. Observers, mainly law students from all over Poland, were sent to each of the 97 commercial courts in Poland to observe in detail the daily workings of the court, and to interview judges, legal representatives and parties in the proceedings.

The report dealt with three different categories of issues: the physical aspects of the courts, the daily workings of the court and assessing the problems that occur during proceedings in commercial courts. Though the findings of our observers were very broad and differed from court to court, there were many reoccurring issues within the commercial court system.

These issues included:

    * lack of qualified personnel,
    * lengthy legal proceedings,
    * inadequately prepared court specialists,
    * difficulties with access to court files and an inability to photograph them,
    * lack of handicap access,
    * lack of uniformed security measures in the courts,
    * difficulties gaining information concerning the location of the court,
    * an inadequate number of restrooms and coatrooms, and a lack of internet access.

There were also positives aspects noted by our observers. They included competent secretariat personnel, well organized and competent judges and well prepared legal representatives. The results of the project were presented in special report and submitted to the Polish Ministry of Justice in order to encourage the appropriate changes in the system of commercial courts.

DLA Piper played a significant role at each stage of this project. Lawyers from DLA Piper, in particular Krzysztof Wiater and Krzysztof Kycia, advised in preparation of questionnaires for observers, in teaching students about various aspects of procedure before commercial courts (which was helpful during the monitoring) and in the assessment of the results of the project. DLA Piper was also involved in promoting the results of this project and enforcing the changes suggested in the final report.

On the day of release of the report we have organized a conference to discuss our results, with participation of Deputy Minister of Justice Jacek Czaja, member of the Civil Law Codification Committee Professor Karol Weitz and other distinguished guests.

The text of the report (in Polish) is available here.