Civil Evidence Act (Northern Ireland) 1971

7 Convictions as evidence in civil proceedings. N.I.

(1) In any civil proceedings the fact that a person has been convicted of an offence by or before any court in the United Kingdom or by a court-martial there or elsewhere shall (subject to subsection (3)) be admissible in evidence for the purpose of proving, where to do so is relevant to any issue in those proceedings, that he committed that offence, whether he was so convicted upon a plea of guilty or otherwise and whether or not he is a party to the civil proceedings; but no conviction other than a subsisting one shall be admissible in evidence by virtue of this section.

(2) In any civil proceedings in which by virtue of this section a person is proved to have been convicted of an offence by or before any court in the United Kingdom or by a court-martial there or elsewhere—

(a) he shall be taken to have committed that offence unless the contrary is proved; and

(b) without prejudice to the reception of any other admissible evidence for the purpose of identifying the facts on which the conviction was based, the contents of any document which is admissible as evidence of the conviction, and the contents of the information, complaint, indictment or charge-sheet on which the person in question was convicted, shall be admissible in evidence for that purpose.

(3) Nothing in this section shall prejudice the operation of section 9 or any other enactment whereby a conviction or a finding of fact in any criminal proceedings is for the purposes of any other proceedings made conclusive evidence of any fact.

(4) Where in any civil proceedings the contents of any document are admissible in evidence by virtue of subsection (2), a copy of that document, or of the material part thereof, purporting to be certified or otherwise authenticated by or on behalf of the court or authority having custody of that document shall be admissible in evidence and shall be taken to be a true copy of that document or part unless the contrary is shown.

(5) Nothing in any of the following statutory provisions, that is to say—

Para. (a) rep. by 1996 NI 24

(b) section 12F1 of the Criminal Justice Act 1948 [1948 c.58] (which makes similar provision in respect of convictions on indictment in England and Wales); and

(c) section 9F2 of the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 1949 [1949 c.94] (which corresponds to the said section 8);

or any enactment of the Parliament of the United Kingdom corresponding to the said section 8, shall affect the operation of this section; and for the purposes of this section any order made by a court of summary jurisdiction in Scotland under section 1F3 or section 2F3 of the said Act of 1949 shall be treated as a conviction.

(6) In this section “court-martial” means a court-martial constituted under the Army Act 1955 [1955 c.18] , the Air Force Act 1955 [1955 c.19] or the Naval Disipline Act 1957 [1957 c.53] F4 . . . , and in relation to a court-martial “conviction”,F5 . . . means a finding of guilty which is, or falls to be treated as, the finding of the court, and “convicted” shall be construed accordingly.

F1 1973 c.62

F2 1975 c.21

F3 1975 c.21

F4 2001 c. 19

F5 1996 c.46