Acta Iuris Stetinensis

Entering into force of the Act on Consumer Rights has made several significant changes in the warranty regulation for the ‘business to business’ trade. The draft law on consumer rights provides that ‘with regard to entrepreneurs, the rearrangement of warranty for physical defects provisions shall ease pursuing economic activity’. It is true in case of the ‘business to consumer’ trade, but not in the ‘business to business’ trade.On one hand, making the seller’s liability unitary should facilitate pursuing economic activity due to the fact that now the seller is not obliged to apply two warranty regulations: one for trading partners, and one for consumers. On the other hand, the seller’s liability for physical defects in the ‘business to business’ trade has been extended by the redefinition of ‘physical defects’. Most of the aforementioned Civil Code amendments were copied from the Act on Special Terms on Consumer Sales. As a result, the strict seller’s liability (foreseeing short deadlines and buyer’s notification about the physical defects) was transformed into to a permissive liability which is favourable for buyers. It should be pointed out that by the warranty regulation the seller is liable to the buyer in any capacity, a fault notwithstanding. Consequently, a buying entrepreneur’s situation is now significantly better than a selling entrepreneur’s situation even though these two parties have an equivalent legal status and none on them should be granted preference (like in consumers regulation). Thus, the amendments may result in increased transaction costs and an augmentation of legal, economic and business risk. It seems that this kind of effects were not foreseen by the Polish legislator because in the draft law on consumer rights entrepreneurs functioning in the ‘business to business’ trade are not enumerated among the entities that may be affected by the planned regulation.