Month: January 2016

The amendments to the Law on Police and laws on other law enforcement agencies introduce two levels of protection for privileged professional communication. The first level concerns the attorney-client privilege and confessional privilege. “These privileges cannot be revoked or lifted, which means that when a particular agency comes across materials containing such privileged communication, they have to immediately destroy them. The second level concerns all other professional privileges, including medical and legal professional privilege,” explains advocate Małgorzata Mączka-Pacholak.

Advocate Małgorzata Mączka-Pacholak points out that an officer of a given agency assesses whether the material is covered by the privilege only after acquainting oneself with its content. “If an officer decides that the obtained material is protected by the legal or medical professional privilege, they have to contact the prosecutor who will then transfer the material to the court. The court will, in turn, decide whether the material can be used in proceedings or not,” specifies advocate Małgorzata Mączka-Pacholak.

She notes that confidentiality of professional communication is not a privilege, but – first and foremost – the right of clients or patients who place their trust in professionals such as advocates or doctors. “In the legal or medical profession, it is important for our client or patient not to be afraid to confide their secrets in us, so that we trust each other. In a situation when there is a suspicion that the client confides their secrets in somebody else as well, the performance of our work is more difficult,” advocate Małgorzata Mączka-Pacholak adds.

In 2003, the applicant’s daughter was detained pre-trial. The family informed the administration of the detention center about the woman’s medical problems. However, their concerns were not taken into consideration and, a couple of days after being placed in a detention center, the applicant’s daughter was transported to the hospital in serious condition. She died soon after. The proceedings against the detention center’s physician had been ongoing before Polish courts until December 2013 when they were discontinued at the appellate stage due to the expiry of the statute of limitations.

In her application, Ms. P. alleged that Polish authorities had violated her daughter’s right to life (art. 2 of the Convention), as they had not complied with an obligation to provide her daughter with proper medical care in the course of detention. “The applicant also claimed that procedural standards had been violated,” explains advocate Paweł Osik, the applicant’s co-counsel. “There were no timely and effective judicial proceedings in the case in order to establish the woman’s cause of death and punish those responsible,” he adds.

In the proceedings before the ECHR, the Polish government submitted a unilateral declaration in which it admitted that the applicant’s daughter had not been provided with proper medical care. The government also admitted that the lack of an effective investigation violated the Convention. The government pledged to pay 15 000 EUR in compensation.

„This is yet another case before the ECHR concerning article 2 of the Convention related to the lack of effective proceedings into the causes of death of the applicant’s relative,” says advocate Mikołaj Pietrzak. “I hope that both this decision and other ECHR decisions in similar cases will improve human rights standards in this matter,” advocate Mikołaj Pietrzak adds.

The case was conducted as part of the Strategic Litigation Program of the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights. Advocates Mikołaj Pietrzak and Paweł Osik represented the applicant pro bono in the proceedings both in national courts and before the ECHR.

As a rule, the only requirement when constructing a provisional building object is to notify the appropriate body. There are, however, exceptions which require obtaining a building permit. This can be the case when construction work interferes with the local spatial development plan.

The notification on the construction of a provisional building object should only be accompanied by drafts, which do not provide a full presentation of the end result. Improper construction of an object can lead to numerous defects and, in a longer perspective, building accident. In such a situation, the liability for such events remains unclear.

The current regulations on provisional building objects raise various concerns, not only with respect to technical requirements, but also legal obligations imposed on those who construct such objects. “Insufficient requirements as to the methods of constructing provisional building objects were the cause of many emergencies, including building accidents. What is more, the question of liability for those events is not unambiguously determined in law,” the authors write in their article.

According to the authors, “it is important to amend the current regulations, mainly with respect to the size of provisional building objects but also the potential outcomes of building accidents involving provisional objects.”