Prawidłowość doręczenia pisma w postępowaniu cywilnym a kryterium czasu. Właściwa chwila (pora) doręczenia

The validity of acts of service in Polish civil procedure law depends on the moment at which it is carried out. Unfortunately, the current statutory regulation does not seem to be a holistic regulation. The structure of acts of service adopted in the aforementioned regulation refers only to the character of daily rhythm of life of a natural person who is an addressee or recipient of a document. It certainly does not take into account the specificity of functioning of some groups of legal entities with a more complicated organizational and functional structure, in particular those having the status of an entrepreneur (including natural persons) and conducting their activity in other time of day than those specified by law or within the framework of continuous movement. Moreover, aforementioned legal solution referring only to the conventional procedure of service of documents has not been adopted at all for the purposes of electronic delivery trading. The current code regulation pertaining to the appropriate moment of service seems, by virtue of its function, to be in all measure necessary, protecting the important sphere of privacy of entities engaged in the field of service as addressees of documents. However, it should be comprehensive in nature. In the context of the procedural law, with a few exceptions, delivery cannot be successfully made on public holidays and at night. Due to the flexibility of creating a work schedule at individual employers, the current solution does not seem to be optimal. The addressee’s consent to service on a public holiday or during night time – in the absence of a prior order of the president of the court – it does not invalidate such action, it remains ineffective. The effectiveness of service, preceded by a relevant order of the president of the court, is independent of the addressee’s consent to receive the letter in the indicated time frames. De lege ferenda, one should consider either separating the structure of the determination of the appropriate moment of service of documents from the existing system of working time distribution adopted on the basis of substantive labor law regulation (which selectively and unjustifiably predestines only one group of addressees of letters – natural persons being employees), or adapting it in a systemic way to the existing solutions in the field of labor law.