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Anna SHTEFAN,

Head of the Department of Copyright and Related Rights of the Research Institute of Intellectual Property of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Candidate of Law Sciences

EVALUATION OF EVIDENCE IN CIVIL PROCEEDINGS

Civil Procedure Code of Ukraine does not define the concept of evaluation of evidence; however, it does establish rules to provide it. These rules create the procedural form of evaluation of evidence which meaning is revealed through the following requirements:

1) the court evaluates the evidence for its internal conviction based on a comprehensive, complete, impartial and immediate investigation of existing evidence. The inner conviction of the court has objective and subjective principles. Objective side has a connection with answers whether the court has reached definitive conclusions about each circumstance of the case, is the court sure of the impossibility of existence of any other conclusions about the circumstances of the case. The subjective aspect of the inner conviction of the court is influenced by the legal consciousness of the judge;

2) no evidence has a pre-set value to the court. The insufficient legislative regulation of research and evaluation of a particular type of evidence; an uncertain behavior of the witness; «reliability» of written documents compared with the testimony of witnesses; higher degree of confidence in the evidence that comes from a person with special public law status, and other similar factors should not affect the perception of the evidence by the court. No evidence can be considered in advance or more convincing to have a higher level of evidentiary value;

3) the court evaluates a relevance, admissibility, reliability of each evidence separately, and the sufficiency and interdependence of evidence in their entirety. The evidence shall include information on at least one of the circumstances relevant to the case. Assessment of the admissibility of evidence is to establish the tribunal compliance with substantive and procedural law in obtaining of evidence. The reliability of evidence is accuracy, correctness, adequacy reflection of evidence-based information in the evidence. To assessment of the sufficiency of evidence is to establish whether or not a set of relevant, admissible and reliable evidence to make accurate, unambiguous, comprehensive conclusions about the presence or absence of facts in the case. The content of existing evidence should form a coherent system of established facts; accurately and surely reproduce the circumstances of the case;

4) results of evaluation of evidence shall be showed in the decision where the reasons for their acceptance or refusal to accept are indicated.

The analysis of procedural form of evaluation of evidence shows that it is primarily the work of human thinking. However, the assessment of evidence is not applied in any form with the criteria selected by the judge but in the form and procedure established by law. So, the first characteristic feature of an evaluation of evidence is the unity of thought and proceedings. The only subject whose evaluation of evidence is able to give rise to significant legal consequences is the court, and this is the second characteristic feature of evaluation of evidence.

The evaluation of evidence is mentally and procedural court’s activities aimed at establishing of the relevance, admissibility and reliability of evidence in a civil case, their sufficiency and interdependence of evidence in their entirety, which is implemented in certain procedural form.

Key words: evaluation of evidence, relevance, admissibility, reliability, sufficiency, subject of evaluation of evidence.

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