Abstract

The coming into force of the extraordinary complaint provisions arouses a lot of questions. One of them concerns legal nature of extraordinary complaint in the context of provisions on complaints against legally valid judicial decisions: Is extraordinary complaint a legal remedy which conditions consideration of a complaint against a legally valid judicial decision? The Supreme Court case law promotes a view that extraordinary complaint is of a subsidiary nature. It assumes that as of 4 April 2018 the party filing a complaint against a legally valid court decision must prove that it has submitted an application to a competent authority to file an extraordinary complaint and that it has been rejected. Otherwise the complaint shall be rejected under Art. 424 § 1 of the Code of Civil Procedure. The presented view is not convincing in light of the procedural nature of the “legal remedy”, procedural legitimacy to file an extraordinary compliant and constitutionally dubious loss of the right to a legal remedy acquired by the parties in the course of the proceedings challenging a judicial decision. A solution of this problem would be amendment to the Supreme Court Act, or the Code of Civil Procedure, or changing interpretation of Art. 424 § 1 of the Code of Civil Procedure.