Polish Supreme Court pauses ZDF series case after AK veteran's death

A court case that has run for 13 years has just been put on hold again. The man who started it will not see the end.

Captain Zbigniew Radłowski, a soldier of the AK (Poland's wartime Home Army resistance), died on 1 November. On Friday, Poland's Supreme Court suspended the case over the German series 'Generation War' (in Polish, 'Nasze matki, nasi ojcowie').

What happened?

Three Supreme Court judges decided to pause the proceedings until Radłowski's possible heirs can join the case. The lawyers for both sides had asked the court to carry on with the claim of the World Association of AK Soldiers and to settle the question of jurisdiction. The judges ruled that the two claims are linked, so the whole case stays on hold.

Radłowski helped rescue and hide Jewish people. He fought in the Warsaw Uprising, was held in the German camp Auschwitz-Birkenau and was later persecuted by Poland's communist regime.

What had happened before?

In 2013, Radłowski and the AK veterans' association sued the German broadcaster ZDF and the production company UFA Fiction in Kraków. They argued the series shows Polish soldiers as antisemites and nationalists who helped Germans in the Holocaust.

The Kraków appeals court ordered the producers to publish apologies to the association. It found that identifying a partisan unit as part of the AK wrongly suggested the formation was antisemitic. But it did not award Radłowski the 20,000 zloty (about 4,600 euros) in compensation he wanted, because he was not individually recognisable in the series.

The Supreme Court then asked the CJEU (the EU's top court) about jurisdiction. The CJEU said that for television broadcasts, you cannot claim full damages in the country where your life is centred. You can sue in each country where the programme aired, but only for harm done there. Full damages can be sought where the defendant lives or where the producers are based.

For online content, the home-country route works only if the person can be identified, directly or indirectly. The CJEU found the series does not allow that for Radłowski.

What's next?

The case stays suspended until his heirs step in. Only then can the Supreme Court return to the question of which courts may decide the claims.

No date has been set.