EN
In the introductory part, the article briefly presents the evolution of the legal construction of the institution of an incident of secondary significance in the Polish penal acts of the 20th century and the presently binding regulation. Moreover, there is a review of three opposing concepts referring to its interpretation and existing in the doctrine and judicature, i.e. an overall concept, a subjective concept and a subjective-objective concept. Further in the article, there is a discussion of an issue connected with the possibility of changing the legal classification of a criminal act: instead of a basic crime of dealing in stolen goods defined in article 291 §1 of the criminal code, it can be classified as a privileged type as in article 291 § 2 of the criminal code and a character of the obligation on the part of court to inform the trial parties about a possibility to change the classification adopted in the indictment. The article also presents information about the number of adult perpetrators convicted for intentional dealing in stolen goods by Polish courts in the years 1999-2002 with the use of the privileged mode, i.e. as an incident of secondary significance. Moreover, the author discusses the sentencing measure and the benefit of the conditional termination of the proceeding used by court. This was done based on the author's own research into the subject.