Evidence in court

SERVING OF EVIDENCE IN COURT

Earlier in the courts until 2016, parties were able to submit evidence to the court at any stage of the court proceedings unless the court renders the decision.

However, from 2016 a new Civil Procedural Code has been operating in Kazakhstan. According to the new Civil Procedural Code, parties must submit all evidence to the court at the stage of preparation to the court proceeding, after the preparation the court cannot accept the parties’ evidence. This was included to the law in order to exclude abuse so that the party does not hold the “trump card” till the last moment and represented such “trump card" in the final moment, when the parties no longer have time to familiarize themselves with the evidence, study the evidence, and find out the refuting evidence.

JUDICIAL PRACTICE

In practice, the courts continued to accept evidence at any stage of the court proceeding as under the old Code, despite the enforcement of the new Code.

However, today another tendency is emerging. Currently many courts start to receive the parties’ evidence only at the stage of preparation to the court proceeding. We believe that this is the right approach as the court and parties should have enough time to evaluate the evidence and provide other evidence that would refute such evidence.

RECOMMENDATIONS

We recommend to collect all the evidence in advance and to prepare a package of documents so that the court could evaluate all evidence together. According to the law, no evidence, whatever it might be, has a predetermined significance for the court.

In any dispute, even if it is winning or allegedly losing, we strongly recommend to obtain the lawyer’s opinion on which you will know:

• whether the case has a perspective or not;

• how the available evidence predetermines the case perspectives;

• what evidence needs to be collected;

• whether it is worth taking the case to the court or whether it is better to resolve it through a settlement;

• how the outcome of the dispute my affect the company’s future or company’s shareholders;

• what expenses will be on fees, lawyers, experts and etc.;

• which dispute strategy to choose;

• sometimes you can lose, but the winner will bring so incommensurate resources that his will be just like a "Pyrrhic victory".