This issue arose when a three-person panel of the Supreme Court was considering an appeal in cassation against the judgment of the Poznań Court of Appeal of 20 March 2020 concerning a payment dispute between two companies, including one in bankruptcy. On 12 March 2020, closing the appeal hearing, the presiding judge informed the parties present that the announcement of the judgment would take place on 19 March 2020, but on 19 March 2020, the presiding judge issued an order changing the date of announcement of the judgment to 20 March 2020, and on that day the judgment was announced.
In this situation, the three members of the Supreme Court: Judges Agnieszka Góra-Błaszczykowska, Dariusz Pawłyszcze and Mariusz Załucki, had doubts as to the consequences of the violation of Art. 326 § 1 of the Code of Civil Procedure, which provides that the announcement of the judgment must take place at the meeting at which the hearing was concluded, and the court may postpone the announcement of the judgment by decision rendered immediately after the end of the hearing to a specific date not exceeding two weeks after the end of the hearing. If the case is particularly complex or the court is significantly overloaded with other matters, this period may exceptionally be one month.
However, this provision raises doubts and several decisions are based on it. Hence the question posed by these three judges to the broader collective of the Supreme Federal Court: – Does the violation of art. 326 § 1º of the Code of Civil Procedure and the announcement of the sentence after the end of the hearing without the issuance of a judicial decision (and only by the presiding judge) to postpone the announcement of the sentence, result in the nullity of the proceedings or in the non-existence of the sentence thus issued?
Mobilizing the courts to avoid delays in proceedings
The authors of the question indicate in their justification that these regulations have been amended many times. In 2009, the number of postponements of the announcement of the judgment was limited to one and for a period of up to two weeks (possibly up to a month), and the purpose of this amendment was to encourage courts not to delay the proceedings. However, if, instead of announcing the judgment, the court reopens the hearing in camera, the parties must be notified of the hearing, and failure to notify leads to the nullity of the proceedings because the party is deprived of the opportunity to defend its rights.
In practice, the case law on violations of art. 326 § 1º of the Code of Civil Procedure and its effects, adopts different positions, from the position that failure to comply with the requirements regarding the publication of the judgment is sufficient to declare the nullity of the process, to the position that failure to comply with the deadline for the publication of the judgment, postponing it twice and even for a period exceeding the 14 days (or months) allowed, does not affect the content of the judgment and does not constitute a violation of the constitutionally guaranteed right of the party to a court.
