July 7, 2022
In general, a party who files a labor claim is obligated to submit evidence: the plaintiff to prove its claim(s) and the defendant to prove its counter claim(s). When litigating in this area, parties should be aware of that there are a number of evidentiary rules which are particular to labor disputes. The following is a discussion of various notable decisions in labor litigation concerning the collection and submission of evidence, which have an effect on the admissibility of evidence in a court of law. Documentation that is not the original or certified true copies In a labor dispute involving employment termination decided by the People’s Court of Ho Chi Minh City, the employee (plaintiff) submitted to the Court a photocopy of the internal working regulations of the company without it being either certified as a true copy or examined by the judicial officers in comparison with the originals. The first-instance court accepted the plaintiff’s claims based on this photocopy, but the People’s Court of Ho Chi Minh City subsequently rejected the employee’s claim at the appellate stage and, additionally based on other procedural violations of the first-instance court, abrogated the first-instance judgment. In detail, Judgment No.522/2019/LD-PT dated June 05, 2019, the People’s Court of Ho Chi Minh City stated that: “The evidence was not collected in compliance with Article 95 of the Code of Civil Procedure: Documents such as […] and the Internal Working Regulations are photocopies without being either certified as true copies or examined by judicial officers basing on comparison with the originals. So these documents are not recognized as valid evidence. It is a violation of the law...