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LEGAL NATURE OF CONTRACTS FOR SERVICES WHICH HAVE NOT BEEN REGULATED BY OTHER PROVISIONS – ACCORDING TO POLISH CIVIL LAW

Krzysztof Kubasik

Abstract

The main aim of this article is the evaluation of the private-law regulation of the contract for services in the Polish law. The Polish Civil Code, on the grounds of the principle of the freedom of contracts, has regulated the basic types of the contracts for services as nominate contracts. Pursuant to Article 750 of the Civil Code, the provisions on the contract for mandate apply accordingly to the remaining contracts for services which have not been regulated by other provisions. Thus, it is necessary to establish the nature and role of such provision and the implications of its application in the Polish law. The dogmatic, legal and historical research methods have been used to analyse this subject. The conducted research allows to conclude that the contracts for services not regulated by other provisions constitute in fact a type of nominate contracts, regulating typical relationships where the object of performance is rendering a service by one of the parties. Reference to the contract for mandate contained in the Civil Code allows to recreate essentialia negotii of such contracts and their general governing law. Therefore, the concluded contracts regarding services - if not regulated by the provisions applying to other nominate contracts - shall be governed by the applicable provisions on the contracts for mandate, namely Article 734 through 751 of the Civil Code. The proposed manner of interpreting the provisions of the Civil Code has not been hitherto analyzed in the Polish civil law. This provides a new perspective on the contracts for services, classifying them as having clear statutory regulation. Thus, it provides tools for granting decision regarding a significant number of legal transactions which to this day have been considered innominate contracts. Such contracts have been evaluated pursuant to various legal provisions applied per analogiam. The proposed interpretation also allows to specify the nature of the contracts for rendering services which differ from the basic statutory model due to the specific provisions established by the parties thereto. Similarly, it allows to define the nature of the contracts whose legal status is regulated by other legal instruments only partially. These would constitute either contracts for services - governed by applicable regulations on the contracts for mandate, or innominate contracts - due to significant differences compared with the basic model.

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