Thailand Court now supports online witness examination. This is due to the recent Covid-19 situation wherein people are unable to travel to Thailand to testify.
Any litigant wishing to examine their witnesses must submit a petition to the court. The litigant must pay the extra regulatory fee for online witness examination. They also have to specify which applications to use for the court hearing, such as LINE, ZOOM, FaceTime, etc.
Once the court approves the petition, the appointment of the witness hearing is then scheduled. The court conducts only one witness examination on screen per day, from Tuesday to Friday from 9:00am to 4:30pm.
Before the screen examination appointment, the lawyer prepares, sets up, and tests the system in the courtroom. The witness who will be participating may also appear on the video for testing.
During the hearing, the interpreter and the lawyer must be present at the courtroom. For the witness to testify, in a proper place, he must have another eyewitness along with him to determine his identity. The eyewitness should be a credible person who can either be a lawyer, a notary public, the village headman, etc, provided that such eyewitness must have evidence to show to the Court.
Any documents or evidence to be used for examination from the witness is at the discretion of the Court. Typically, the officer will accept a copy of the evidence to be shown to testify, but must submit the original documents thereafter.
Moreover, if one party needs to request for a court online hearing, he must have a consent from the other party. For estate management case, online examination via screen is applicable.
