Any lawyer should have a certain set of skills, the main of which is the ability to interpret the law correctly. The result of the matter, the effectiveness of the specialist’s activity, depends on this. The purpose of the lawyer is to turn the law and present evidence in a light favorable to the client. Knowledge of the law means the perception of not the wording, but their content. The procedural legislation contains rules establishing that certain circumstances do not need to be proved. We are talking about well-known facts. Examples and features of them we will consider in the article.
General information
Before talking about what is a well-known fact, let's say a few words about the procedure of proof.
The evidence in the case is information obtained in the manner prescribed by law, on the basis of which the court determines the absence / presence of circumstances confirming the claims / objections of the parties, as well as other circumstances relevant to the objective consideration and resolution of the dispute. This can be the explanations of the participants in the case and third parties, testimonies of witnesses, material or written evidence, video / audio recordings, expert opinions, etc.
Each party should only confirm the facts to which it refers in its statements and petitions. The court, at its discretion, determines which circumstances are material for the case, which participant must prove them. He also has the right to submit certain facts for discussion (even if the parties did not refer to them).
Exceptions to the Rules
However, legislation provides for the possibility of exemption from evidence. Facilitating the task of participants in proving and the court to study and evaluate the submitted materials is determined by the requirements of rationality and time saving. In this regard, in Art. 61 of the Code of Civil Procedure, the provision is established that prejudicial and well-known facts in the civil process cannot be proved. A similar rule applies to facts recognized by the parties if the relevant recognition is accepted by the court. Thanks to this, the parties to the dispute can concentrate on confirming other circumstances to which they refer in their petitions and applications.
Definition of a concept
Well-known are those facts whose truth is obvious. Despite a fairly simple definition, in judicial practice it is often difficult to classify certain circumstances as well-known. The situation is complicated by the fact that legislation provides the right to determine the evidence of facts only to the court. According to some lawyers, proving well-known facts is a waste of time. Their denial is either ridiculous, or due to the desire of the parties to delay the proceedings.
Difficulty in practice
Well-known facts that cannot be proved must have certain characteristics. First of all, information about them should be known to the masses. For example, a well-known fact that does not require proof is the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1989.
But what about, for example, a river spill in a city? Indeed, for local residents and the district court, this fact is well known, and for those living in another region - absolutely not. Therefore, if the case will be dealt with within the appropriate locality, there will be no problems. But in the case of sending materials to higher authorities, difficulties may arise.
Regarding the above examples, there are 2 opinions:
- And in the first and second case we are talking about well-known facts. But in the second situation, the district court should make a reservation for subsequent instances.
- In the second case, the fact is not well-known, since circumstances that are not known at the local (local) level, but on a large scale, can be attributed to this category.
Features Features
Theoretically, there are two criteria by which a fact can be recognized as well-known:
- objective - a wide circle of persons should know the information; for the court, the main thing is not that the event is known, but that the court should know about it;
- subjective - all members of the court should be aware of the fact.
Many lawyers consider this criterion to be key, since it is the decision of the court that will determine whether or not the circumstances are generally recognized.
Court initiative
According to general procedural rules, the burden of proof always rests with the parties to the process. The tasks of the court include only the study and assessment of the materials presented during the proceedings.
Some jurists, for example, M.Z. Schwartz, believe that it is possible to completely single out the proof of well-known, without identifying it with the proof of the fact itself. If it is recognized that well-known circumstances, due to their special nature, really deserve the burden of proof, then it turns out that the court can take part in providing information about the well-known fact to establish it.
It should be noted that no procedural code contains rules for recognizing circumstances as obvious. In practice, a different form can be used. The subject can be exempted from evidence by the tacit consent of the remaining participants and the court, as the court determines, after a corresponding oral statement at the preparatory stage or directly at the meeting.
Important point
The domestic law enshrines the principle of competition between the parties. Its action to some extent restricts the freedom of the court to independently search for information about the controversial circumstances of the case. At the same time, however, the legislation cannot prohibit the court on its own initiative from bringing out the possibility of recognizing certain facts as well-known for discussion if the relevant information was obtained from a reliable and reliable source.
Let's continue. To ensure a comprehensive and fair resolution of cases, it is necessary to develop and consolidate legislatively criteria for recognizing facts as well-known, in order to avoid recognizing as such circumstances about which the plaintiff was known with certainty.
Classification
As the analysis of judicial practice shows, evidence-based well-known and negative facts can be divided into the following groups:
- Information obtained in the course of logical reasoning. For example, the court may recognize the fact that non-payment of wages negatively affects the emotional state of a citizen or that maiming in itself causes moral harm to the victim.
- Information from databases, registers, calendars, encyclopedias, etc. These include the facts of accepting the inheritance, information about the dynamics of changes in the interest rate on loans, setting the date on the calendar, the development of an infectious disease, the distance between settlements, inflation, etc. .
- All sorts of events, including local events. For example, spontaneous flooding in the village of Novomikhailovsky, Tuapse district of Krasnodar Territory, liquidation of an enterprise in Toguchin, Novosibirsk Region. considered common knowledge. Quite often, in the court rulings there is a clause stating that the fact is recognized as well-known for a given locality.
- Information from the Internet, the media. When recognizing the facts as well-known (in particular in criminal proceedings), it is necessary to carefully analyze the sources of information. After all, there are official and unofficial media; The Internet can be trusted far from always. It seems that the fact can be recognized as well-known if the information about it caused a wide resonance.
- Information "from the words" of the party to the dispute. This information is the most controversial. Of course, the fact cannot be recognized as well-known only because the court simply believes in the words of the plaintiff or relies on the experience of the applicant.
To summarize
Based on an analysis of the theory and practice of application by the courts of the provisions of the procedural codes of well-known facts, several conclusions can be formulated.
Firstly, information about them should be known to a wide range of subjects. In this case, well-known must necessarily be objective. The court may become aware of it directly at the hearing, during the proceedings. The institution at its discretion recognizes or does not recognize the fact as well-known.
Secondly, information about a circumstance that does not need to be proved must be obtained from reliable and accessible sources. The legislation does not fix this rule, but in practice it is always used.
Nuances
Some foreign countries have special rules of evidence. In accordance with them, the courts can recognize this or that fact as well-known, if information about it:
- known to all persons within the territory of the jurisdiction of the jury;
- can be obtained quickly from a source whose reliability is not in doubt.
Many countries also practice printing information from the Internet with the source, specific date and time. This solves the problem of instability and unreliability of information from the network.
Conclusion
It is believed that the well-known facts are those that are known within a particular area to every adult, rational, attentive, educated person with a certain life experience, including participants in the process and the court. Meanwhile, most of the above characteristics are blurred. How, for example, can one determine who is "educated", who "has life experience"?
And if you take the concept of "reliable"? For a Russian, this word should be associated with the absence of doubts about the veracity and truth (this, by the way, is also confirmed by the Explanatory Dictionary). In the modern world, however, PR moves are too often used and newspaper ducks are published. Different media have different points of view on the same events. Under such conditions, some circumstance may well become known to a wide range of subjects, but at the same time it may not correspond to the actual state of affairs. Is it possible to recognize such facts as "well-known", despite the dissemination of information about them and people's confidence in their reliability - remains a question.