The plaintiff brought an action against the defendant to remove the effects of the infringement of personal rights by the defendant’s failure to further prevent the plaintiff from contacting the minor daughter of the parties. The Court of Appeal made a thorough analysis of the evidence to determine the admissibility of meeting the Plaintiff’s demands.
The parties met in Austria. Before their daughter was born, the respondent returned to Poland, where she was raising the child. After some time, the defendant initiated contact between the father and the daughter. Meetings were held in Poland, always in the presence of the mother, on average four to five times a year. Each time, the meetings lasted about 45 minutes. During this time, the interested parties usually eat their meals, talked, played or shopped. During each of these meetings, there were quarrels and even quarrels between the parties, which were caused, in particular, by financial settlements between former partners, the purchase of certain things and their financing by the plaintiff. As for the bond between the Plaintiff and his daughter, it should be considered that their relationship was good. The girl was not afraid of her father, she was happy to spend time with him.
Due to the parties’ constant quarrels caused by the finances, the plaintiff’s contacts with his daughter were weakened or even prevented. The plaintiff filed a lawsuit in which he accused the Defendant that in the period from June 2015 to August 2016, the defendant infringed his personal interest in the form of an emotional bond between him and his daughter, limiting the plaintiff’s personal contacts with the child, as well as telephone and with the use of electronic communicators, leading to an almost complete severance of these contacts. As a result of severing contact with the daughter, the plaintiff experienced harm, pain and emotional suffering in the analyzed period.
Taking into account the nature of the infringed personal interest of the plaintiff, the Court ordered the defendant to refrain from further preventing the plaintiff from contacting a minor daughter. Both parties appealed against this ruling.
Indeed, the parties were not in dispute about the circumstances related to the course of contacts between the claimant and the parties’ minor daughter. Each of the parties only presented the reasons for the conflicts that arose in this connection and the motives for the behavior of the other parent differently.
The appellate court shared the view of the court of first instance that a personal and emotional bond with the closest family members may be included in the category of personal rights within the meaning of Art. 23 of the Civil Code, subject to protection pursuant to the provisions of Art. 24 of the Civil Code and art. 448 of the Civil Code The Court of Appeal was not convinced that the personal rights of the Complainant had been violated, as the very right to cultivate a bond with a common child was not violated. In the opinion of the Court of Appeal, even if such an attitude of the defendant constituted a breach of the conditions resulting from the above-mentioned the decision of 17 April 2015 (establishing contact with children), it was not tantamount to infringement of the personal rights of the claimant to maintain ties with the child as defined above. While the claimant wanted to exercise the rights granted to him in accordance with his own interpretation of this judgment, he should initiate a procedure for its compulsory enforcement, regulated in the provisions of the civil procedure (execution of the judgment).