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Evidence Act 2006

Trial process - Notice of uncontroverted facts and reference to reliable public documents

129: Admission of reliable published documents

You could also call this:

"When can a Judge use reliable books and documents as evidence in court?"

Illustration for Evidence Act 2006

In a trial, you might see a Judge allowing certain published documents as evidence. This can happen when the documents are about public history, literature, science, or art, and the Judge thinks they are reliable. The Judge gets to decide if a document is reliable or not.

When a Judge admits these documents as evidence, some usual rules do not apply, such as the rules about hearsay evidence and rules about opinion evidence and expert evidence. This means that the documents can be used as evidence even if they would not normally be allowed. You should know that this only happens with the specific types of documents mentioned.

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View the original legislation for this page at https://legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1986/0120/latest/link.aspx?id=DLM393969.

Topics:
Crime and justice > Courts and legal help
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128: Notice of uncontroverted facts, or

"Facts everyone agrees on that the Judge can notice and use in a court case"

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130: Offering documents in evidence without calling witness, or

"Using documents as evidence without calling the person who made them"

Part 3Trial process
Notice of uncontroverted facts and reference to reliable public documents

129Admission of reliable published documents

  1. A Judge may, in matters of public history, literature, science, or art, admit as evidence any published documents that the Judge considers to be reliable sources of information on the subjects to which they respectively relate.

  2. Subpart 1 of Part 2 (which relates to hearsay evidence) and subpart 2 of Part 2 (which relates to opinion evidence and expert evidence) do not apply to evidence referred to under subsection (1).