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This judgment will become final in the circumstances set out in Article 44 § 2 of the Convention. It may be subject to editorial revision.

The European Court of Human Rights (Fourth Section), sitting as a Chamber composed of:

Nicolas Bratza, President, Lech Garlicki, Giovanni Bonello, Ljiljana Mijović, Ján &Scaron;ikuta, Mihai Poalelungi, Neboj&scaron;a Vučinić, judges, and Lawrence Early , Section Registrar ,

The case originated in an application (no. 1783/04) against the Republic of Poland lodged with the Court under Article 34 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (“the Convention”) by Felix Blau sp. z o.o. (“the applicant company”), a limited liability company based in Wrocław, Poland, represented by the president of the management board, Mr Andrzej Flis, on 30 November 2003.

The applicant company was represented before the Court by Mr M. Czarnecki, a lawyer practising in Warsaw. The Polish Government (“the Government”) were represented by their Agent, Mr J. Wołąsiewicz of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Auto-extracted from BAILII. Full structured brief in progress — the source links below give you the verbatim judgment in the meantime.

On 8 September 2008 the President of the Fourth Section of the Court decided to give notice of the application to the Government. It was also decided to examine the merits of the application at the same time as its admissibility (Article 29 § 3).

THE FACTS

I. THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE CASE

The applicant company is a limited liability company which at the material time carried on a business of buying debts.

A. The first set of civil proceedings

On 14 February 2002 the applicant company instituted civil proceedings before the Wrocław Regional Court (Sąd Okręgowy) against the Dolnyśląsk Sickness Fund (Dolnośląska Regionalna Kasa Chorych). The applicant company had agreed to buy from four hospitals the debts owed by the Sickness Fund to the hospitals in the amount of 60,000,000 Polish zlotys (PLN) provided that the company won its case against the Fund. The applicant company sought payment of the above-mentioned sum together with interest, which amounted to PLN 89,316,240 (approximately 22,000,000 euros (EUR)). The hospitals claimed that the Fund should be liable for paying the cost of medical treatment that had exceeded the contract that every hospital had negotiated with the Fund but which had been necessarily sustained by them in providing medical services to insured persons.

The applicant company also asked for exemption from court fees, submitting that it had been involved in several court disputes in order to claim debts for medical services.

On 12 March 2002 the Wrocław Regional Court partly allowed the claim and exempted the company from court fees in excess of PLN 50,000 (EUR 12,000). The court examined the profit generated by the company and found that the assets deposited in its bank account amounted to PLN 50,000. Moreover, in December 2001 the president of the board had received PLN 43,000 as payment for an unknown service. The court thus concluded that the company had been able to pay this amount of court fees without damaging its operation.

On 27 September 2002 the Wrocław Regional Court dismissed the action. The court agreed with the arguments of the defendant, who had refused liability for costs in excess of the amounts agreed in the contracts between the Fund and the hospitals. The court established that the contracts had not been renegotiated and had remained valid, which excluded the Fund's liability for expenses sustained by the hospitals that exceeded the contracts.

The applicant company lodged an appeal against the judgment.

On 4 November 2002 the Wrocław Regional Court ordered the applicant company to pay a further PLN 50,000 in court fees for pursuing its appeal. On 8 November 2002 the applicant company applied for an exemption from those fees, claiming that the company had already been exempted from fees and should not be ordered to pay any more at the appeal stage. In its supplementary documents the applicant company submitted that the company did not have the required sum of money in its bank account and that previously it had had to borrow from a private individual. The company was small and new on the market, thus it would not be able to obtain a bank loan. In sum it had not been possible for it to pay a further PLN 50,000 and the refusal to exempt it from court fees would amount to a violation of its right to court.