Messenger chats as evidence in сivil and arbitration proceedings — Russian judicial practice

Abstract

The development of production and distribution relations, which are forms of interaction among society and individuals, and social groups presupposes the adequate development of procedural legal means for ensuring (implementing and protecting) the constitutional rights of participants in these relations. As is well known, the socioeconomic conditions of human society development provide new sources and means of judicial evidence. The task of justice is to provide participants in a judicial dispute with a legal opportunity to use acceptable judicial evidence in accordance with the procedures established by law. This study analyzes the judicial practice of using information from the messenger chat in court proceedings and formulates rules for using the messenger chat and screenshots as an acceptable judicial proof. Among these rules, the following should be noted: mandatory identification of the message recipient, identification of the true will of the message sender, coordination of the order of sending messages via messenger chat, etc.
 The article discusses the opinion of scientists about the attribution of a screenshot to written or electronic evidence.
 Considerable attention is paid to the problem of using correspondence in the messenger chats as a source of judicial evidence in resolving labor disputes.
 The authors made a final conclusion about the positive attitude of Russian courts to the use of information from the messenger chats as a legal source of judicial evidence. The rules of their application warrant attention.