Lech Wałęsa loses appeal in legal dispute with historian Sławomir Cenckiewicz

The Warsaw Court of Appeal has issued a final ruling in a legal dispute between former Polish President Lech Wałęsa and historian Sławomir Cenckiewicz. The court dismissed Wałęsa’s appeal, upholding a previous 2023 decision and requiring the former president to cover the costs of the appeal proceedings.

The lawsuit centered on Cenckiewicz’s use of excerpts from books by Roger Boyes and Paweł Zyzak regarding Wałęsa’s political history. Following the ruling, Wałęsa published a sharp critique on social media, referring to Cenckiewicz as a “pomiot ubecki” (offspring of the SB/secret police) and claiming that the court’s decision was based on “well-prepared evidence” from the communist-era security services.

Cenckiewicz responded to the social media posts by characterizing the reaction as a statement from a “Living Legend” and emphasized that the case protected a historian’s right to cite established research and documents.