Digital Evidence and Electronic Signature Law Review

Misunderstanding Digital Computer Technology in Court

2025-03-25T16:04:02+00:00

On 3rd May 2007, the long-time Manager of the England’s Lane Post Office in Hampstead, England , Mr. David Cameron, was found guilty in the Crown Court of ten counts of theft from six customer-complainants in the period July 2005 to February 20061. Mr. Cameron applied to the Court of Appeal for an extension of time to apply for leave to appeal against his conviction, in light of the issues now known with the Horizon system, which processed the transactions involved in Mr. Cameron’s prosecution (the original deadline for filing for appeal had long passed). The judgement was published on 31st March, 2022. The Court of Appeal declined Mr. Cameron's application to appeal his conviction and provided their reasons.

AI evidence and the future of motor vehicle accident disputes

2025-07-09T16:46:46+00:00

This paper uses a learning scenario to explore how UK civil courts may deal with self-driving vehicle cases involving a collision. We explore challenges related to obtaining and presenting evidence about decisions made by artificial intelligence (AI) and the impact the legal process may have on automated vehicle (AV) users and other road users.

At first glance, UK legislation regulating AV claims appears to provide a straightforward mechanism for any road user to make a claim for injury or damage caused by a vehicle in self-driving mode. However, this paper will discuss how in the event of the insurer denying a claim or the insurer alleging that the AV user contributed to the accident, those disputing an insurer’s decision, will have no alternative but to take the expensive and time-consuming action of pursuing the matter through the courts.

The UK has introduced legislation which creates a benchmark of safety for AVs which is that AVs should drive to the standard of a ‘careful and competent human driver’. This means that if an AV has a crash while driving itself, an assessment has to be made: Was the vehicle driving like a careful and competent human driver? In the first instance, this decision will be made by the insurer.

If an insurer decides the AV was not at fault, and instead, the AV user was at fault, or partially at fault, the user is at a distinct disadvantage if they disagree with the insurer’s assessment. Anyone disputing the insurer’s assessment will need access to vehicle data and expertise to interpret the data. It will be possible to access some data, but the majority of the relevant data may be difficult to obtain. While there are laws regarding compulsory incident data recording, the mandatory parameters are narrow, and this data may not reveal how an incident occurred. More data parameters exist and will be recorded and available to manufacturers and service providers, but these will not necessarily be made available to other parties. Parties such as AV users, who are not in control of the data, will have to request access. Where this is not voluntarily forthcoming, production of this evidence must be pursued through the Courts.

If an insurer assesses a crash and assigns liability to an AV user, and that user wishes to dispute this and allege that an incident happened due to faulty AI, the existing legal presumptions in the UK about the reliability of computers, combined with the inexplicable nature of deep learning algorithms, presents an almighty challenge for both a user to present a case and for the Court to understand the evidence before it. The UK has not (at the time of writing) amended its product liability legislation to include AI and software. Consequently, if there is an allegation of a vehicle fault relating to the AI, and this is not accepted by the insurer, the claim must be pursued via a negligence claim.

This paper considers how cases may be presented and the issues which arise as a result of the interaction between the law and the AI used in vehicles.

Reading between the (binary) digits

2025-10-09T13:38:20+00:00

This article explores the evolution and status of the Vietnamese legal framework on electronic evidence, highlighting its strengths and weaknesses from both theoretical and practical perspectives.

Establishing innocence when computer data indicates guilt

2025-10-09T13:41:06+00:00

The Post Office scandal has been widely described as the UK’s biggest ever miscarriage of justice. During the period between 1999 and 2015 over 900 people were convicted of theft and false accounting offences. These convictions were based on data from the faulty Horizon IT system. Whilst the statutory Post Office inquiry continues to examine the wide-ranging failings that led to these convictions, one area that deserves consideration is how the repeal of section 69 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (Evidence from Computer Records) enabled these convictions to be possible and whether the section should be reinstated.

This paper argues that a reinstatement of the dictum that ‘the computer is always wrong,’ unless proved otherwise, is not without its problems and will not resolve the issues that have come to the fore following the Post Office cases.

Editorial

2025-12-15T16:37:42+00:00

Case translation: Belgium

2025-12-15T16:38:56+00:00

In this interlocutory judgment, this court, at the request of the parties, ordered, before rendering judgment, the appointment of an expert to examine the Tesla S Pl00 DL vehicle, which had been purchased on [ ] 2018, by (the first appellant) through leasing from (the second appellant) from TESLA BELGIUM BV (the respondent).

Belgium; hidden defects Tesla S Pl00 DL vehicle; disclosure/discovery; expert investigation frustrated and hampered; lack of loyal cooperation with the expert report and the evidence

Cumulative Index 2004 - 2024

2025-12-17T18:58:13+00:00

Index and tables

Subject index

Table of authors

Table of cases

Transcripts

Judgments

Rulings

Orders

Translations

Case notes

Table of electronic signature law legislation

Table of statutes translated

Table of books