The Statutory and Institutional Framework for the Protection of the Rights of Consumers Against Unfair Terms in Consumer Contract: The Cameroonian Reality

Significant imbalance in the rights and obligations of the parties to a consumer contract term is, together with good faith, a fundamental pillar of substantive protection against unfair terms. It is the primary tool provided by Council Directive 93/13/EEC of 5 April 1993 on unfair terms in consumer contracts with a view to mitigating differences in bargaining power between professional traders and consumer on the ever-expanding capitalistic market within the EU. The paper comprehensively reviews the meaning of the “significant imbalance” element by reference to a cross-section of judgments handed by the CJEU and Polish courts. Generally, albeit with a few notable exceptions, the former court has engaged in a subjective-objective exercise aimed at discovering what the balance of rights and obligations would have been between the parties in the particular dispute at hand had it not been for the purportedly unfair clause. Besides that, the requirement has been utilized to impose ad bolster a host of information duties levied on traders so that protection is extended to cases where the consumer is unaware of their rights or are deterred from enforcing them due to procedural obstacles or prohibitive costs of judicial or administrative proceedings. The requirement of significant balance, rooted in the idea that the disproportion of market power between the parties to a disputed term necessitates government or judicial intervention to achieve or restore contractual equilibrium, is shown from a plethora of angles: its ideological foundations, practical connotations, its emphasis on consumer vulnerability and approach to economic power. Assistance and inspiration re gleaned from Polish jurisprudence where numerous questions either unanswered by the CJEU or left to the consideration of national courts, particularly the relation between reasonableness, on the one hand, and significant imbalance and good faith on the other, as well as between significant imbalance and good faith, have been tackled.

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Badanie przez sąd z urzędu skuteczności powołania się na właściwość miejsca płatności weksla — uwagi na marginesie uchwały Sądu Najwyższego z dnia 19 października 2017, III CZP 42/17

Przegląd Prawa i Administracji ◽

10.19195/0137-1134.116.2 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 116 ◽

pp. 29-40

Author(s):

Przemysław Jadłowski

Keyword(s):

Consumer Contract ◽

Unfair Term ◽

Consumer Contracts ◽

Unfair Terms ◽

The Right

EX OFFICIO EXAMINATION THE EFFECTIVENESS OF INVOKING THE JURISDICTION OF THE COURT ARISING FROM THE PLACE OF PAYMENT OF A PROMISSORY NOTE — COMMENTS ON THE MARGIN OF THE SUPREME COUTR’S RESOLUTION DATED 19 OCTOBER 2017, III CZP 42/17The article is about the relation between the obligation of ex officio examination of unfair terms in consumer contracts, including determining the jurisdiction of the court, and the nature of promissory law. The author will consider whether the domicile clause included in the promissory note issued by the consumer or defined in the promissory note agreement may constitute an unfair term in a consumer contract. It will be necessary to assess the character of promisory notes and terms contained. The consequence of the unilateral nature of issuing a promissory note is a denial of the right to examine the abusiveness of the terms contained in the fully completed promissory note. The possibility of examining the unfair character of the domicile clause exists, however, in the case of a blank promissory note, since it may not concern the promissory note itself, but the terms of the promissory note agreement.

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ECONOMIC CONSIDERATIONS AS A FACET OF SUBSTANTIVE UNFAIRNESS OF CONSUMER CONTRACT TERMS IN THE PRACTICE OF POLISH COURTS

Review of European and Comparative Law ◽

10.31743/recl.4512 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 34 (3) ◽

Author(s):

Piotr Sitnik

Keyword(s):

Legal Analysis ◽

The European Union ◽

Consumer Contract ◽

European Regulation ◽

Council Directive ◽

Consumer Contracts ◽

Unfair Terms ◽

The One ◽

Exercise Of Discretion ◽

Economic Considerations

It is trite law and a common cliché reiterated in the judgments of the Court of Justice of the European Union that the economic situation of a consumer subjected to a purportedly unfair consumer contract clause is generally impertinent. This general tenet of the European regulation of unfair terms in consumer contractsis borne out particularly by Article 4(2) of Council Directive 93/13/EEC of 5 April 1993 on unfair terms in consumer contracts, under which assessment of the unfair nature of a term shall not encompass an inquiry into the adequacy of the price and remuneration, on the one hand, as against the services or goodssupplies in exchange, on the other, in so far as these terms are in plain intelligible language. Despite this seemingly bold orientation towards the formal side of the unfairness assessment, efforts have been made to inject into the judicial exercise of discretion a degree of consideration of the economic standing and interests of both the consumer and the trader involved in the particular dispute at hand. This has been done primarily by reference to the “significant imbalance” requirement pursuant to Article 3(1) of the Directive. The paper reviews an extensive crosssection of judgments handed down in Polish courts based upon the Polish transposition of the Unfair Terms Directive to show that the courts have on numerous occasions ventured outside the boundaries delineated by traditional legal analysis (even beyond the flexible bounds of purposive interpretation) to scrutinize the size and gravity of the economic burden the term under scrutiny is liable to impose upon the consumer relative to its economic strength on the market.

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THE FUNCTIONS OF TRANSPARENCY IN REGULATING CONTRACT TERMS: UK AND AUSTRALIAN APPROACHES

International and Comparative Law Quarterly ◽

10.1017/s0020589311000108 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 60 (2) ◽

pp. 355-385 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

CHRIS WILLETT

Keyword(s):

Civil Law ◽

Main Issue ◽

Consumer Contract ◽

Unfair Terms ◽

The Uk

AbstractThis article considers the functions of transparency in regulating consumer contract terms in the UK and Australia. The discussion is set in the context of EU level regulation with various references to civil law approaches. The main issue explored here is the extent to which transparency is capable of legitimizing substantively unfair terms. However, I also explore other roles that may be played by transparency and the extent to which these are facilitated in the UK and Australia.

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Public Procurement and Innovative Economy Forming

Voprosy Ekonomiki ◽

10.32609/0042-8736-2010-6-108-117 ◽

2010 ◽

pp. 108-117 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

I. Smotritskaya ◽

S. Chernykh

Keyword(s):

Conceptual Framework ◽

Public Procurement ◽

Innovative Activity ◽

Institutional Framework ◽

Effective Management ◽

Russian Economy ◽

Public Resources ◽

Innovative Economy ◽

Procurement System

The article analyzes the conceptual framework of public procurement system as an integral part of public regulation to ensure effective management of public resources. The authors consider the problems of transition to a new "quality" of the procurement system, increasing its innovative activity. They put forward proposals for institutional framework and mechanisms of regulating procurement, meeting the needs in innovative upgrading and modernization of the Russian economy.

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Veiled Theory: The Transmutation of Anthropology in T. S. Eliot's Critical Method

Paragraph ◽

10.3366/prg.2007.0007 ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 29 (3) ◽

pp. 77-94 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Adam Trexler

Keyword(s):

Critical Theory ◽

Literary Criticism ◽

Literary Theory ◽

Institutional Framework ◽

Philosophical Investigation ◽

Institutional History ◽

Human History ◽

Critical Practice ◽

The Absolute ◽

Historical Moment

While literary criticism is often seen as an unself-reflective forerunner to literary theory, this article argues that T.S. Eliot's theory of critical practice was a philosophically informed methodology of reading designed to create a disciplinary and institutional framework. To reconstruct this theory, it enriches theoretical methodology with intellectual and institutional history. Specifically, the article argues that Eliot's early critical theory depended on the paradigms of anthropology and occultism, developed during his philosophical investigation of anthropology and Leibniz. From this investigation, Eliot created an occult project that used spiritual monads as facts to progress toward the Absolute. The article goes on to argue that Eliot's methodology of reading was shaped by anthropology's and occultism's paradigms of non-academic, non-specialist reading societies that sought a super-historic position in human history through individual progress. The reconstruction of Eliot's intellectual and institutional framework for reading reveals a historical moment with sharp differences and surprising similarities to the present.

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