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For the tenth time, the Pro Bono Lawyer Award has been given by the Legal Clinics Foundation and the Rzeczpospolita daily. During the award-giving gala of 17 April 2013, Rzeczpospolita also bestowed diplomas for individuals and firms featured in the eleventh edition of the law offices ranking.

Upon the Helsinki Foundation’s application for judicial review, the Provincial Administrative Court has reversed the decisions of the Chief Commissioner of the Police who refused to answer the HFHR’s original question about Police statistics on the use of GPS as a covert investigative method. At the same time, the Court obliged the Chief Commissioner to give an answer to this question.

On Thursday, 16 April 2013, the Warsaw’s Court of Appeal heard the appeal in the personal interests infringement case brought by Bogdan Wróblewski, a journalist with Gazeta Wyborcza, against the Head of the Central Anticorruption Bureau. The claimant, now the appellee, alleged that the CAB had unlawfully acquired journalist’s telecommunication data, including his phone records, for a period of six months in the years 2005–2007. The first-instance court ruled for Mr Wróblewski.

The HFHR applied to the Minister of Transport, Construction and Maritime Economy, stressing the need to elaborate provisions of the Tenant Protection Act. Under current regulations, a debtor who raises objections as to the standard of housing offered to them by municipal authorities faces a risk of being evicted into the streets.

At the end of February and in early March 2013, more than ten secondary school graduates lodged constitutional complaints with the Constitutional Tribunal requesting the constitutional review of the law not allowing for any appeal against a decision to annul secondary school leaving examination.

On 28 March 2013, the Supreme Court adopted a seven-judge resolution holding that an assessment of the excessive length of judicial proceedings covers the entirety of the litigation. It means that courts adjudicating cases initiated by a complaint for an excessive length of proceedings must review the entire procedural course of the case, covering the period starting with the case filing until its final resolution, regardless of the case procedural stage at which the excessive length complaint has been actually filed.

An Azerbaijani court ordered detention of another human rights activists in this country. They have been charged with illegal possession of arms. According to local human rights advocates and NGOs, the arrests are related to the protests organised in March.

In late March, the Lublin City Council resolved, “in consideration of the Christian traditions” of the city, to cease the municipal financing of “the works and events contrary to public morale or promoting scandalous content”. The HFHR brought the matter to the attention of the Mayor of Lublin.

Precisely seven years after two Pruszków psychiatrist had been detained pending trial, the Warsaw Circuit Court discontinued the proceedings against Urszula L. citing the negligible social harm presented by the alleged offences. The Court also affirmed the lower instance’s acquittal of other defendant, Andrzej S. The judgement is final.