Abstract

The gloss analyses the description of agent’s claim for compensation adopted by the Supreme Court in its judgment passed on 29 September 2011 in case IV CSK 650/10. The Supreme Court stated that the claim is aimed at agent’s participation in substantial profits attained by the principal, the causality of which with the activities of the former agent is different than the causality regulated in Art. 361 § 1 of the Civil Code. The Supreme Court rejected the indemnification nature of such claim, as well as the classification of such claim as a claim for special consideration or a claim on account of unjustified enrichment, and also found it unrelated to other financial claims of the agent. The substantial profits referred to in Art. 764³ § 1 of the Civil Code were treated by the Supreme Court “in a more general meaning” as the possibility of attaining “stable income”. The reasoning carried out in the gloss point to the doubts as to the description of compensation and an instrument of agent’s participation in substantial profits within the meaning of Art. 764³ § 1 of the CC. The gloss also notices interrelationship between the claim for compensation and the claim for indemnification under Art. 764² § 2 of the CC and the impact of the amount mentioned in Art. 764⁶ § 3 of the CC on the amount of compensation. The author also presented arguments against placing substantial profits within the meaning of Art. 764³ § 1 of the CC in the sphere of the economic potential of an undertaking and indicated the justness of relating those profits to the value of client’s performance within the obligation binding the client with the principal. The gloss provides arguments in favor of the absence of any relationship of the claim for compensation with the institution of unjust enrichments, as well as arguments confirming the rightness of Supreme Court’s position with respect to non-applicability of Art. 361 § 1 of the CC for identification of the type of causality between agent’s activity and attainment of substantial profits by the principal within the meaning of Art. 764³ § 1 of the CC.