PGNiG charges penalty for unclaimed gas volume. The court finds – the penalty is not due

The case, which on July 5, 2024. was decided by the Regional Court in Kielce, as a court of first instance, concerned a rather unusual case.

Well, the company that the Law Firm’s lawyers represented in the lawsuit, in 2019. began business activities of a mining nature. That year, on December 19, it entered into a comprehensive agreement with PGNiG, together with an annex, for the supply of gas over a period of 1 year, starting January 1, 2020.

In the first quarter of 2020, the company conducted business, and therefore took delivery of the ordered volume of gas, exceeding the quantities assumed in the annex. Unfortunately, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the market for the raw material extracted by the company was completely frozen, which meant the company had to partially lay off employees, stop production and thus suspend operations.

Due to the course of the pandemic, numerous restrictions and the situation in the outlets, the company did not resume operations until the end of 2020 and thus did not collect the ordered volume of gas.

In such a situation, PGNiG charged a contractual penalty for the uncollected volume and issued a summons for payment, followed by legal proceedings against the company. The company, on the other hand, entrusted our Law Firm’s lawyers to handle the litigation.

All settlement attempts between the parties failed. PGNiG disputed the Law Firm’s lawyers’ position that the company acted under force majeure conditions, a circumstance that had a direct impact on the failure to collect the ordered volume of gas.

The gas supplier argued that under such circumstances, when the company had been operating for several months, it was difficult to determine what reasons actually influenced the decision to suspend operations.

The argumentation of the Law Firm’s lawyers also aimed to show that the provisions of the contract do not give grounds in such circumstances to charge a contractual penalty, and certainly not in the amount of about PLN 1 million. The advocates and attorneys also raised a number of circumstances related to the legal aspects of claiming contractual penalties.

The court, in a closed session, dismissed PGNiG’s claim in its entirety. Since the ruling was made in closed session, we are waiting for the reasoning behind it, which we will inform you about. This is not the only case over contractual penalties demanded by PGNiG, so it is worth learning about the court’s reasoning.