Przegląd orzecznictwa Naczelnego Sądu Lekarskiego z 2011 r.
A review of judicial decisions by the Supreme Medical Court in 2001

Summary/Abstract: As in the case of other verdicts by the judiciary, the decisions of medical courts by principle do not constitute legal precedents in our legal system. In other words, they do not establish a new legalstandard and only present a practical interpretation of individual legal provisions. In the case of medical courts the situation tends to be slightly more complicated, given the content of article 76 of the Code of Medical Ethics. By virtue of this regulation, in the cases not provided forby the Code of Medical Ethics, one should follow the principles expressed in the legal decisions of medical courts, among other things. The opinions and arguments of the Supreme MedicalCourt are significant, as in conformity with article 90 of the Act of December 2, 2009 on legal chambers, the Supreme Medical Court is a court of appeals from the decisions of regional medical courts. The current Act provides for the possibility stipulated in article 84, saying that when a penalty referred to in article 83, section 1, items 4–7 is adjudged, a medical court can decide to publish its legal decision in the bulletin of the regional medical chamber where the defendant is a member. Nevertheless, medical courts apply this regulation infrequently. Therefore, the need to publish selected decisions of the Supreme Medical Court seems unquestionable, and the present paper tries to perform this task, albeit only partially. The paper presents selected justifications ofthe legal decisions issued by the Supreme Medical Court in 2011. This presentation serves the exclusive purpose of presenting the issue and is not intended to brand individuals or entities (DistrictMedical Courts and District Commissioners of Professional Responsibility) taking part in the proceedings. While the justifications of the verdicts issued by the Supreme Medical Court do not contain their arguments, the author of the paper took it upon himself to emphasize the most crucial aspects of the described justifications.

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