The Supreme Court ruled that a court is obligated to consider everything that constitutes procedural material in its assessment of the case, regardless of whether an undisputed document was introduced as part of the statement of facts or cited as evidence. It found that it constituted a procedural error for the Court of Appeal to disregard the documents in its assessment. The Supreme Court emphasized that undisputed documents—even if they can be introduced into the process as part of the statement of facts—can be cited as evidence and that it is often appropriate to do so.
In the civil case, a party submitted certain documents—including some email correspondence—as part of their statement of facts. The opposing party stated that he did not question the authenticity of the documents. The Court of Appeal stated that written documents submitted as part of a statement of facts constitute assertions about the evidentiary facts shown in the documents and that the court cannot assess the content of the documents in relation to disputed legal facts in the case.
Separately, the Administrative Court of Appeal had rejected a request to access a number of documents in machine-readable form. The Supreme Administrative Court ruled that the complainant therefore had the right to appeal the decision. Since there is no obligation for the court to provide documents in any form other than printouts, the appeal was dismissed.