In the course of their professional activities the lawyers working for Nowosielski, Gotkowicz i partnerzy Adwokaci i Radcy Prawni have brought about a number of breakthrough judgements in leading cases. Short descriptions of the most important cases together with the main theses included in the summaries of the rulings of the Supreme Court and the Supreme Administrative Court which have been pronounced in the context of proceedings handled by our lawyers are presented below.
1. „The Gdańsk Tenement Houses"
In 1945, after the liberation of Gdańsk, the media published an appeal to the Polish citizens to come and settle in Gdańsk and to rebuild the city, in order to prove that Poland was able to restore Gdańsk to its former glory after the destruction it suffered during the war and that it merited the so-called “Regained Territories” (Ziemie Odzyskane). Polish citizens, full of patriotic feelings, reacted in a very positive way and made an effort to rebuild the city of Gdańsk. In the very beginning of 1945 the city administration of Gdańsk entered into land lease agreements covering the period of many years with people who were willing to rebuild the city from the ruins. These agreements included a guarantee of a pre-emptive right to the rebuilt real estate offered to these people in case such real estate was to be put up for sale. In August 1945 the occupation Soviet forces left the city of Gdańsk causing even more destruction to the city than during the war.
2. Aleksander Kwaśniewski v. „Życie”
In August 1997 the all-Polish daily newspaper “Życie” run by Tomasz Wołek and a local newspaper called “Dziennik Bałtycki” featured a press article entitled “Holidays with a secret agent” dealing with the possible meetings between President Aleksander Kwaśniewski with a secret agent Vladimir Auganov which allegedly took place during the President’s holidays in Cetniewo. Prior to the publication of these articles the journalists spent over two months gathering materials in the “Cetniewo” holiday centre, they got acquainted with all the materials which have been made available to them and talked to all the people who had any information whatsoever about the issue. Finally they also asked the President Aleksander Kwaśniewski to grant them an interview about his alleged meetings with the agent of the Russian intelligence services. The President did not consent to the interview, but he gave a public statement in which he said that at the end of July and at the beginning of August 1994 he did not meet Vladimir Auganov.
3. The Bug River People
The implementation of claims of people who, as a result of the war which started in 1939, left their properties on the territories which are presently not included within the Polish borders and who, on the basis of the provisions of international agreements entered into by the Polish State were supposed to receive an equivalent of the value of the property left behind has been very difficult from the very beginning, that is from 1944. Some of these difficulties were objective, resulting from the fact that some of these people were leaving the eastern territories of the Republic of Poland within its boundaries dating back to 1939 in the course of the war, and the remaining difficulties were due to the intentional policies of the authorities, which included the authorities of Poland and of the former Soviet Republic (presently Lithuania and Ukraine) which were not willing to let any middle class establish itself on the basis of people who have resettled to Poland, as such a middle class would certainly constitute a potential source of resistance against the new authorities.
4. Natoniewski
Winicjusz Natoniewski sustained bodily injuries on 2 February 1944 during the pacification of a village called Szczeczyn by the armed forces of the Third German Reich. A suit was filed on his behalf to the Regional Court of Gdańsk, containing a claim for relief for physical and psychological suffering sustained during the pacification of the village and which make it difficult for him to function in a normal way until today. The amount of the relief sought is equal to 1 million PLN. The selection of the legal form of the suit and of the Polish court resulted from the previous negative experiences of people who filed compensation claims in German courts. The courts of the Federal Republic of Germany maintained that the claims raised by the injured parties were subject to time limitation and they dismissed them on that grounds.
5. Katyń
The Court of the Russian Federation and the bodies of the Prosecutor’s Office of the Russian Federation unwaveringly refuse to acknowledge that the massacre of the Polish soldiers in Katyń should be treated as a crime of homicide. The Federation of the Katyń Families has selected a couple of pilot cases in relation to which it intends to file complaints against the Russian Federation to the European Court of Human Rights in order to make the Katyń massacre declared a crime of homicide and to obtain at least some symbolic relief.
