Reasonable employer — Aid for joint and several liability of an entrepreneur for paying the remuneration of a subcontractor

Abstract

The implementation of joint and several liability of the investor to the Polish Civil Code (CC) was to be a remedy for payment problems of subcontractors that had not received their remuneration for construction works that they had conducted. By agreeing to conclude a subcontracting agree-ment, the investor was to jointly and severally be liable with the contractor for paying the remunera-tion of the subcontractor. The manner of drawing up Article 6471 of the CC did not allow for achiev-ing the goals assumed by the employer, thus it was necessary to refer to the paradigm of a reasonable employer. Only then was that provision able to gain an acceptable and internally consistent content.