Does a rental firm lose the car when the hirer drives drunk?

Law as it stands on 19 August 2026.

Since 29 January 2026 a Polish court has been obliged to order forfeiture of a vehicle driven by an offender found with at least 1.5 per mille of alcohol in their blood. The question every rental operator asks next is whether that reaches a car out on hire. It does not. The Criminal Code bars forfeiture of a vehicle that was not the offender's exclusive property, and a rental car fails that test in every single hire. The expense sits in the procedure that runs earlier, and these provisions award the owner nothing on that account.

The provision

Forfeiture of a motor vehicle is governed by article 44b of the Polish Criminal Code, as amended by an act of 4 December 2025 published at Journal of Laws 2025, item 1872. Its principal provisions took effect on 29 January 2026.

The article works on two thresholds. Below 1.5 per mille, and in proceedings concerning driving in breach of a court ban, forfeiture remains discretionary. At or above that level it becomes mandatory, subject to a narrow exception for exceptional circumstances.

The limitation that decides the position of a rental fleet sits in the fifth paragraph:

Art. 44b § 5 pkt 1 k.k. „Przepadku pojazdu mechanicznego nie orzeka się, jeżeli: 1) w czasie popełnienia przestępstwa pojazd mechaniczny nie stanowił wyłącznej własności sprawcy."

Forfeiture is excluded where the vehicle was not the offender's exclusive property at the time of the offence. A vehicle under a rental agreement never is. The same exclusion covers leased vehicles, company cars and any form of co-ownership. In place of forfeiture the court orders a payment of between 5,000 and 500,000 zloty, charged to the offender and payable to the state. The owner of the vehicle receives nothing from it and is not a party to that ruling.

One point of history matters here, because commentary written before the amendment is still in circulation. Paragraphs two to four of article 44b have been repealed. In their earlier form they provided for forfeiture of the monetary equivalent of the vehicle, a construction described by the Ministry of Justice in its guidance to the rules in force from March 2024. That construction has been replaced.

Seizure at the roadside

A ruling on forfeiture closes the proceedings. The vehicle leaves the fleet at the start of them, under a procedural provision that gives the police no discretion.

Art. 295 § 1a k.p.k. „Policja dokonuje tymczasowego zajęcia pojazdu mechanicznego prowadzonego przez sprawcę w czasie popełnienia tego przestępstwa."

The provision directs seizure and contains no test of ownership. That question is settled later in the proceedings.

The scope of that duty is set by a cross-reference. It points to article 44b § 1a alone, meaning the 1.5 per mille threshold. Below that level, and in cases concerning a driving ban where forfeiture is discretionary, this particular duty does not arise. The general basis in article 295 § 1 covers movable property belonging to the suspect, a category a rental vehicle falls outside.

None of which means the vehicle stays on the road. Other routes take a car out of its owner's hands: securing an item for evidential purposes, and removal from the road under road traffic law. Which route applies to a given incident depends on its circumstances, and that is a legal assessment rather than an operational one.

The fork: seven days or several months

Art. 295 § 4 k.p.k. „Tymczasowe zajęcie upada, jeżeli w ciągu 7 dni od daty jego dokonania nie zostanie wydane postanowienie o zabezpieczeniu majątkowym."

The period runs from the date of seizure and governs a decision by the prosecutor. It says nothing about release of the vehicle. Its effect is to separate two outcomes of incomparable magnitude. Absent a securing order, the seizure lapses and the question becomes one of collecting the vehicle. Where a securing order is issued, the vehicle stays seized for as long as the criminal proceedings run, which is measured in months. Seven days is therefore the floor of the downtime, not its measure.

Article 293 § 3 provides that an order in the matter of securing may be appealed. It does not address the position of an owner who is not a party to the proceedings. Resolving that belongs to a lawyer holding the file.

The code sets no period for the physical release of a vehicle from a police compound once a seizure has lapsed, and no public data on how long that takes is available.

The cost that no provision covers

The financial effect on a rental business takes the form of downtime. The asset stays put and stops earning.

The shorter scenario costs out simply. At a daily rate of 200 zloty, used here purely as an arithmetical assumption, seven days out of service represents 1,400 zloty of revenue not earned on one vehicle. That figure is revenue rather than margin, so the real hit to the result is smaller by the variable costs not incurred over the same week. Cancelled reservations sit on top. In peak season those same seven days bite harder, because the whole fleet is booked and nothing is free to substitute.

The second item can be established in advance, though it rarely is. Where a vehicle goes to a compound by way of removal from the road, the removal charge and the daily storage rate are set annually by resolution of the county council under article 130a ust. 6 of the Road Traffic Act, within maximum rates published each year by the finance minister in the official gazette Monitor Polski under article 130a ust. 6c. That resolution is a public act, so the rate applying locally can be known before an incident. Whether the same rates govern a vehicle held under criminal procedure is not settled by the road traffic provision.

The payment ordered against the offender goes to the state and gives the owner nothing. Recovering the downtime is a civil claim against the hirer, pursued under general rules and at the operator's own cost. One circumstance is easy to miss when planning around this: the debtor on that claim is the same person the court has just charged with a payment reaching half a million zloty, alongside the other measures imposed in the same case. Several obligations resting on one debtor bear directly on how much of any award is actually collectable.

What changes in practice

Three operational consequences follow, independently of any legal assessment. None of them shortens a seizure or influences the prosecutor's decision. What documentation settles is different: how quickly ownership can be established, and what the operator holds in any later civil claim against the hirer.

Availability of documentation. Establishing title, and establishing who was driving at a given moment, rests on the registration document, the insurance policy, the rental agreement and the handover record. Where those are spread between a system, a folder and an inbox, the response time moves from hours to days.

Timestamps rather than dates. The question the documentation has to answer concerns a specific hour. A handover record carrying only a date cannot tie a driver to an event on a particular night.

Fleet loading. Losing one vehicle for a week during a fully booked period forces the cancellation of several reservations rather than one. Slack in the schedule becomes a risk control at that point.

Sources

• Article 44b, Polish Criminal Code
• Article 295, Polish Code of Criminal Procedure
• Article 293, Polish Code of Criminal Procedure
• Act of 4 December 2025, Journal of Laws 2025 item 1872
• Ministry of Justice guidance on the vehicle forfeiture rules
• Article 130a, Road Traffic Act

This material is informational and does not constitute legal advice. Assessment of an individual case belongs to a lawyer.