Nullity of legal acts as a result of abuse of dominant position

Bibliogr. w przypisach. Streszcz. w jęz. ang. s. 98-99.

Competition law often provides that any legal acts, including contracts, resulting from infringements of competition law should be considered null and void. This sanction is therefore a sanction of civil law and it raises a few interesting questions. It is much easier to accept that a contract containing clauses forbidden by the competition law, such as price-fixing, is null and void (in whole or in part), but the problem is much more complex when the abuse of dominant position is the reason of nullity. Contracts forced upon other undertakings by a dominant undertaking usually do not contain clauses that as such would violate the law, and declaring them null and void could lead to many undesirable consequences. The article argues that in such cases one has to establish whether the abuse is reflected in the provisions of the contract itself. This could be generally assumed if the abuse is directed at the other party and in such a way that in order to determine abuse it is not necessary to take into account other behavior of the dominant undertaking or market circumstances. Hence, manifestly unfair contract terms (such as excessive prices, unjust terms and conditions of payments, etc.) could fall into this category, whereas such forms of abuse as discrimination, predatory pricing or loyalty rebates should not entail nullity.