КОРПОРАТИВНА ОТГОВОРНОСТ. ПОЛСКОТО ЧАСТНО ПРАВО И ЗАПАДНАТА ПРАВНА ТРАДИЦИЯ
CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY. POLISH PRIVATE LAW AND THE LEGAL TRADITION OF THE WEST

Summary/Abstract: The Polish legislator has extended the strict liability of entrepreneurs to in-clude cases of damages and injuries caused by conducting special business activity. It was justified by the principle cuius commodum eius periculum, cuius commodum eius damnum which was also invoked in the jurisprudence of the Polish Supreme Court. This principle, together with the similar principle of ubi emolumentum ibi onus, shows that strict liability is grounded in the principle of economic utility. Historical research, however, has shown that neither of these two justifications originates in Roman law. Although the prin-ciples are taken from Roman legal sources, they were used by Roman jurists in different contexts: in contractual obligations and in the law of succession, where they have their roots. The ancients also applied strict liability to certain types of entrepreneurs, yet with a different ratio: to limit the abuse of customer trust. The development of law shows that after centuries of the prevailing idea of fault liability, legislators are nowadays returning to strict liability in the case of entrepreneurs with a different kind of justification, recalling the fact that all types of liability were already present in Roman law.

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