Michał Gintowt | In Principle

In the context of an M&A transaction a business lawyer is often perceived as necessary evil, a hardly justified cost. Even experienced market operators, when reflecting on how counsels contribute to their deals, seem to only focus on the most obvious, technical aspects of our job. “We have to engage and pay lawyers because they know the exact words that need to be put to paper for things or money to change hands and for us to be able to seek recourse” their reasoning seems to go. In more extreme cases clients are certain that lawyers, by definition, always impair the prospects of their enterprise.

Representations and warranties are a common feature in M&A transactions and derive from common law systems. The fundamental aim of representations and warranties is to properly divide risk between the seller and the buyer. In countries with an Anglo-Saxon legal system, statements made regarding the object of sale are in fact explicitly an element of ex delicto liability, as misrepresentation, and contractual liability as breach of warranty. The significance of statements of this kind in contracts governed by Polish law is not entirely clear and has been widely discussed in case law and legal literature. The conclusions reached are summarised below.

A guarantee agreement is the most widely accepted and common basis for a number of solutions used in M&A transactions. Therefore, its correct application is of fundamental importance for this practice. Meanwhile, judgments issued in recent years by the Supreme Court of Poland on the nature and normative sources of such obligations have caused doctrinal controversies and uncertainty among trade participants. It is therefore worth briefly summarising where the case law stands and the conclusions that can be drawn from it.