On January 29, 2012, an annual celebration in the memory of the Revd. Martin Luther King, Jr. will start at 5:15 pm in the vicinity of the Hague, the Netherlands.  The event will feature a keynote speaker, dinner, music, and other notable speakers.

This year’s keynote speaker will be Mr. Paul Rusesabangina who was featured in the movie, “Hotel Rwanda,” and received the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush.  Mr. Rusesabangina saved 1,200 lives during the horrific genocide in Rwanda which, in his words, “took about one million people in 100 days.”  Mr. Rusesabangina’s efforts provide a bright light of humanity in the midst of the genocide and suffering.

Mr. Rusesabangina has been awarded the National Civil Rights Museum Freedom Award, the Raoul Wallenberg Medal, and the Tom Lantos Human Rights Prize.

Another speaker for this year’s event is Revd. Harcourt Klinefelter, a Mennonite pastor who lives in the Netherlands and previously served as Associate Director for Public Relations for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference led by Revd. King.  Revd. Klinefelter was both a friend and professional colleague of Dr. King.  He has since worked on mediation efforts in the Balkans and he keeps the spirit of civil rights, service, and peace and reconciliation alive through his work.

In addition, Ms. Lois Mothershed Pot will share her personal stories at this event.  She was the first African-American president of the National Christian Students Union, the first African-American student in her university in the United States, and the “big sister” of Thelma Mothershed who was one of the “Little Rock Nine” high school students who were allowed access to Central High School in Little Rock with the help of the National Guard.

As for entertainment, professional singers Roberta Alexander and Adrienne West will perform. The American School of the Hague Jazz Combo and Singers will also provide musical entertainment while their fellow students speak about what Dr. King’s legacy means to them. Ms. Lisa Kierans, Deputy Director of the United States Embassy in the Netherlands, will read a Presidential Proclamation.

This event has been celebrated by the community in the Hague, mostly expatriates and also Dutch nationals, to remember Revd. King’s life and achievements every year since 1985.  An organization called Overseas Americans Remember organizes the event.  This year, the event is also being organized in cooperation with De Boskant in the Hague.  Robert J. Gaudet, Jr. of RJ Gaudet & Associates LLC has attended this event for the past three years, and he finds it very inspirational and educational.

The cost of the event with dinner and drinks is 30 Euros for adults and 15 Euros for children.  If you are interested in attending, RSVP to Mrs. Roberta Enschede at robertaenschede at yahoo dot com.

(L to R) Prof. Slomanson; Mrs. Oluyede; Ms. Turchi; Judge Hasani; Prof. Dr. Detter de Frankopan

On October 13, 2011, Robert J. Gaudet, Jr. and Ingrid Detter de Frankopan moderated panel discussions at the American Bar Association Section of International Law conference in Dublin, Ireland.

Prof. Detter de Frankopan moderated a panel on State Secession.  She played the role of UN Secretary General in seeking the advice of the other panelists on a hypothetical situation involving the secession of the southern Confederist States of the United States from the rest of the Union due to human rights violations including the banning of traditional Southern food, clothing, and customs.  The panelists engaged in a lively discussion of the issues of State Secession which are controversial topics that touch upon Kosovo, Taiwan, the Basque area of Spain, Slovenia, Croatia, Chechnya, and other flash-points in the world.

The speakers from the State Secession panel included Prof. William Slomanson of the Thomas Jefferson School of Law; Dr. Enver Hasani, Judge of  the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Kosovo; and Prof. Dr. Ingrid Detter de Frankopan.  The panel was organized by the American Bar Association SIL International Human Rights Committee, Co-Chaired by Mrs. Olufunmi Oluyede.  Mrs. Turchi in the photo above is Vice-Chair of the Committee and attended the State Secession panel.

Mr. Gaudet, who previously served as Co-Chair of the American Bar Association SIL International Human Rights Committee from 2009 to 2011, moderated a panel discussion titled “Gypsy Justice: the Plight of Roma, Irish Travellers, and Nomads.” The panelists included an actual Irish Traveller named Martin Collins who is associate director of Pavee Point Traveller’s Centre in Dublin; Prof. Anastasia Crickley of National University of Ireland, Maynooth, who is also a member of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination; Idaver Memedov, a lawyer of Roma ethnicity who works on impact litigation at the European Roma Rights Centre in Budapest, Hungary; Siobhan Cummiskey, a lawyer at the Irish Traveller Movement Independent Law Centre who works on impact litigation in Ireland; and Marc Willers, an English Barrister who is a leading lawyer who represents the Roma and Irish Travellers and who was designated by the Council of Europe to speak on their behalf on the panel.

In the panel discussion, Mr. Gaudet role played as a Roma man from the Balkans who suffered from police brutality and then moved with his family to the Czech Republic where his children were put into segregated schools.  The facts of his role play were taken from real cases in national courts and the European Court of Human Rights.  In his role play, Mr. Gaudet asked the panelists to describe his legal rights and the situation of Roma and Irish Travellers.

Mr. Collins described his own experience, as an Irish Traveller, with unlawful arrest and police brutality.  Ms. Cummiskey described her legal advocacy on behalf of Irish Travellers who are evicted from the camp sites where they live on a temporary basis.  Mr. Willers described the Dale Farms case in the United Kingdom, where he serves as lead counsel on a case that is well-known on the streets of the U.K. and Ireland.

This blog entry provides a retrospective view on the first year of Poland’s new class action law based on newly released information.  This past summer, in July 2011, Poland quietly celebrated the birth of class actions and greater access to justice within their legal system.  Poland’s new law on class actions became effective in July 2010.

The new class action law in Poland is known as the Ustawa o dochodzeniu roszczen w postepowaniu grupowym (“Act on Class Actions”) and it was passed on December 17, 2009, published in the Dziennik Ustaw (Journal of Laws) on January 18, 2010, no. 7, item 44 p. 1, and took effect six months later in July 2010.  What happened in the first year of the new law’s operation?

A Polish litigator, Jolanta Budzowska, confirms that 42 class action lawsuits were filed in Poland in the past year.  That might seem like a large number but, given Poland’s population of 38 million people, it is not so high.  In the United States, roughly 3,000 class actions are filed each year.  Even so, the number of class actions in Poland is proportionally higher than in Sweden (population 9 million).  During the first five years of Sweden’s new class action law, only 8 class actions were filed.[1]

Class actions have been filed at a more rapid pace in Poland than in Sweden.  Here’s how we’ve reached that conclusion.  If we multiply the number of Swedish class actions over five years (i.e., 8 of them) by four to reflect the larger proportion of Poland’s population (which is roughly 4 times bigger than Sweden’s population), then we would have expected the Poles to have filed 40 class action lawsuits over five years.  Instead, they filed 42 class actions in only one year.  This is a higher rate than in Sweden.  The reasons why could form the subject of a separate article or even a PhD thesis.

As to the particular class actions filed in Poland, Ms. Budzowska of Budzowska Fiutowski i Partnerzy kindly supplied RJ Gaudet & Associates LLC with some of the details about two class actions.  One of the class actions in Poland was filed by Poles who suffered damage as a result of a severe flood.  They sued the State for compensation.  A court in Kraków decided to accept the lawsuit for further recognition, so the case has not been dismissed.  As of yet, the court has not issued any substantive judgment.

In another class action, Poles who suffered damage due to the collapse of a roof at a trade hall in Katowice sued for compensation.  The court subsequently dismissed the lawsuit on the basis that the plaintiffs’ legal claims were not recognized under Poland’s class action procedure.

The Helsinki Foundation of Human Rights based in Warsaw, Poland recently prepared a report on class actions in Poland.  The report should be available, in the near future, on the Foundation’s website.  It is unclear whether the report will be available in English.  According to the report, the implementation of class action lawsuits did not result in any considerable revolution in the Polish legal system.  At the same time, according to the report, class actions are now viewed as an important step in improving access to court for the average Polish citizen.

Contrary to earlier concerns, Ms. Budzowska noted, Poland’s new class action law did not turn out to be risky for entrepreneurs. Rough estimates show that 70 percent of Poland’s class actions were filed against the State Treasury and government municipalities.  Only 30 percent of Poland’s class actions were filed against companies as defendants.

The Foundation’s report also showed that the new class action procedure has not been used as widely as expected prior to its becoming effective.  Poland’s Ministry of Justice provided information that by August 2011 there had been 42 class action lawsuits filed in Poland, as noted above.  Higher numbers were expected before the law went into effect.  Furthermore, most of these cases were rejected in a preliminary stage of court proceedings.

Class actions in Poland are permissible for product liability and torts.   Under Article 1 of the act regulating class action lawsuits in Poland, the act applies in cases involving consumer protection, liability for damage caused by dangerous products, and for torts, except that class actions cannot be brought for claims for protection of “personal interests” or “personal rights.”

The reason why most of the 42 class actions in Poland, so far, have been dismissed by courts is because they were based on an inadmissible cause of action.  Poles may not prosecute class actions to enforce “personal rights” or “personal interests” including non-pecuniary interests that are protected by law and enjoyed by individuals and legal persons.  The catalogue of personal interests/rights is open and it is not comprehensive, but individuals most frequently seek protection for the following “personal rights”:

• one’s good name
• human dignity
• health; freedom
• honor (dignity and reputation)
• freedom of conscience
• name or nickname
• image
• confidentiality of correspondence
• scientific creativity
• inventions and improvements
• privacy
• peace
• worship

To be clear, none of these personal rights can form the basis for a class action in Poland.   As the lawyers in Poland gather more experience in their steep learning curve, they will surely file fewer suits over “personal interests” and learn how to prepare complaints that state viable claims under Poland’s new law.

This blog was written on the basis of research and advice provided by Ms. Budzowska, a lawyer based in Warsaw, Poland.  RJ Gaudet & Associates LLC works on class actions in the U.S., other legal matters in the U.S. and U.K., and coordinates research and litigation with lawyers in other jurisdictions.

Yes, they do. Class actions have come to prominence in the past 5 years in several E.U. Member States but they are a new phenomenon and the European Commission is currently debating whether to require them in all E.U. Member States for the private enforcement of competition law and consumer protection law.  Until April 30, 2011, the Commission accepted comments from stakeholders in its latest round of consultation.

In Europe, class actions are often called by different names, such as “collective actions” or “group actions”, but a rose by any other name is still a rose – in other words, these procedural devices function the same way. In each instance, a single person may file a civil lawsuit and thereby represent an entire “class” or “group” or “collective” of people with similar grievances. Class actions in Europe are procedural devices used to gather people with similar grievances based on the same underlying substantive law, such as a national law against fraud or an E.U. treaty article on competition.

Many countries in Europe have class actions in some form or another including England, Wales, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Italy, Portugal, and Spain.  Due to disincentives for European lawyers and victims, the class action mechanisms in Europe are used less frequently than in the United States.