Public procurement – verdict on contract invalidity
Today, the District Court in Poznań, after a five-year trial, issued a judgment dismissing a claim by the President of the Public Procurement Office to annul a contract for the design of the interiors of the Poznań City Stadium.
The law firm is representing the defendant project company, which executed the projects, in this case. The second defendant is the City of Poznań, which in 2009 ordered for an amount of approx. 2 million zlotys of negotiated services. The subject of the dispute was whether the prerequisites for a negotiated contract specified in the article 67 section 1(1)(b) of the Public Procurement Law, namely whether, in order to carry out the designs for the stadium’s interiors, it was necessary to interfere with the construction design and detailed designs and, more specifically, to interfere with the copyrights to these designs, as claimed by the ordering party. The firm’s lawyers, in turn, argued that the second premise of article 67 section 1 (1)(a) PPL that is, the urgency of the order.
The court shared this reasoning and to this extent relied on the opinion of an expert in the field of architecture and determined that entrusting the task to another design studio did not guarantee that the stadium would be delivered by the start of the Euro 2012 tournament, and would additionally entail a longer execution time and costs of 400,000 more. PLN.
In the Court’s opinion, an action for the annulment of a contract entered into in violation of the procurement procedure should be treated as ultima ratio, and in the present case it did not serve the public interest. The verdict is not final.