Pursuant to Article 2a of the Act on Public Roads of 21 March 1985 (Journal of Laws of 2007 no. 19 item 115, consolidated text, as subsequently amended) national roads are owned by the State Treasury and regional roads, county roads, and municipal roads
are owned by the respective regional, county, or municipality local government. Despite the above regulation, for many years it was not at all uncommon in day-to-day legal dealings for a public road to have been built on third-party properties. The above situation resulted in a de facto expropriation of such property, as its owners were unable to dispose of their ownership right. In the light of the above, legislators decided to remedy the resulting discrepancy between the factual and legal status of such properties by passing the Act on Regulations Enacting Statutes Reforming Public Administration of 13 October 1998 (Journal of Laws of 1998 no. 133 item 872, as subsequently amended) (“Act”).
Pursuant to Article 73(1) of the Act, any real properties which as at 31 December 1998 were in possession of the State Treasury or local government units and were not owned by them, occupied by public roads, as of 1 January 1999 became by operation of the law the property of the State Treasury or the respective local government units against compensation. While under these arrangements the State Treasury or local government units were to acquire legal titles to real properties occupied by public roads, the regulations did not solve all the problems involved in clarifying the legal status of the real properties in question. In the cases, combined for joint proceedings, which were determined by the Supreme Court under its ruling of 17 May 2012, Case File No. I CSK 408/11, a local government unit and the State Treasury applied for acquisitive prescription of road properties with an irregular legal status. While no act had been issued with respect to the properties subject to the court proceedings that would confer upon them the public road status, they had been used for these purposes. The applicants argued that the roads at issue had been administered by them, thus demonstrating that the applicants had been independent possessors of the real properties in question. Ruling on the case before it, the Supreme Court held that a real property used for years as a public road cannot be subject to independent possession leading to its acquisitive prescription by a third party. In the Supreme Court’s opinion, the actions outlined by the applicants relating to the administration of the real properties subject to the proceedings constituted state control and so were exercised in the public interest.
However, within the meaning of Article 336 of the Civil Code in conjunction with Article 172 of the Civil Code another type of control over a thing provides the grounds for acquisitive prescription, namely the intent to hold it. Consequently, the Supreme Court held that the possession of the road properties in the manner exercised by the applicants could not lead to acquisitive prescription of the real properties subject to the court proceedings.
The opinion of the Supreme Court outlined above can hinder clarifying the legal status of real properties occupied by roads. As it happens, there are real properties which have not become the ownership of the State Treasury or a local government unit under Article 73 of the Act as they did not meet the conditions laid down under the regulation (e.g. the relevant road had not been formally included in the public road category).
It seems that the above ruling of the Supreme Court of 17 May 2012 will prevent sorting out legal status of these real properties from being regulated by acquisitive prescription.