Pretrial disclosure of proofs in civil and arbitration process

In the legislation of the Russian Federation there is no procedure for proofs disclosure outside the remedial activity. Under "pretrial disclosure of the proofs" it is necessary to consider an activity of the potential participants' disputable judicial relationship, carried out before the beginning of case proceedings in court and related to the exchange of necessary evidentiary material. In our opinion, the model of the institute of pretrial disclosure of proofs should be under construction so that the potential parties of the legal conflict had the right to receive information about the proofs and the copies of proofs which the opposite party has before the court trial officially begins. The judicial body, having received the appropriate application from a person and having estimated the relevance of the proofs to the case, should within five days send the potential participant of the process, who are the prospective parties, the clarification explaining their responsibility to disclose proofs during a pretrial process. The person who received such clarification, is obliged within 10 days to send the opposite party of dispute the information about the proofs and a copy of the available proofs, and then, in court, to provide the proofs of having compiled with this regulation or information on impossibility to disclose the proofs due to their absence, or the information on impossibility to compile with the regulation established by the law. In case if a party does not comply with this regulation, it might be deprived of the right to refer to the proofs in order to substantiate their arguments or objections during the trial. It is possible to carry out the pretrial disclosure of proofs in several categories of cases. It is necessary to distinguish between the observance of the claim order, provision of proofs, and pretrial disclosure of proofs. On the basis of stated it is possible to suggest an admissibility of introduction of pretrial disclosure of the documents in the remedial legislation of the Russian Federation, as it will allow the parties to collect complete information about the nature of the dispute and necessary proofs available before the beginning of legal activity in court. But in this case it is required to fix the mechanism of such disclosure with clear descriptions of legal consequences of the failure to perform this requirement.

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