Court’s intervention into protection of personal rights claims

Polish Civil Code contains a list of claims enabling a person to protect their personal rights in an event of a violation. A claimant may rise several claims jointly or choose some from among them. 
It often happens that we wonder how should the court’s verdict look like when claims have been chosen inadequately or formulated in a wrong way by the claimant.
 

Publication of a statement of a proper content and in a proper form is a claim of a profound importance. It is aimed at implementing the key purpose of any proceedings concerning the protection of personal rights – it allows to eliminate the results of a violation. It is done either by withdrawing groundless accusations, correction of information or by apology.

However, we should remember, that the court will not do the job for us, they shall not draft the statement from scratch. We can’t leave this task to the defendant either. A claimant has to submit their own proposal of the text. This specific proposal will be a starting point, something that will be assessed by the court. The court shall decide whether this text is sufficient to eliminate the effect of the violation. On the other hand, such a statement may not duplicate the violation. It should not also violate rights of the defendant. For this purpose the court is entitled to make the statement more precise as well as to eliminate some parts of it. 

The form, place, size or time of the publication of the statement are also determined by the claimant. The practice shows, that defendants, while publishing the statement, always take advantage of any mistakes or inaccuracies procured by the claimant or the court. 
As far as the form of the statement is concerned, the court is allowed to amend claimant’s demand in this respect so the form would be adequate to the scale and the place of the violation as well as to the circle within which the infringing publication has been disseminated.

It is also allowed for the court even to change a demanded “public” statement into a “private” one, addressed directly to the claimant. When it is done by the court it shall not be deemed always as a judgement beyond demands.