Table of Contents
- 1)Evidence’s Nature and Rules
- I.- Confession
- II.- Public and Private Documents
- Documents Written in a Foreign Language
- III.- Expert Opinions
- IV.- Judicial Inspection
- V.-Testimony
- VI.- Elements Provided by the Discoveries of Science
- VII.-Human and Legal Presumptions
- 2) The Burden of Proof
- 3) Weigh and Formal Value of Evidence
- Confession’s Value
- Document’s Value
- Expert Witnesses Opinions’ Value
- Judicial Inspection’s Value
- Testimonies’ Value
- Elements Provided by the Discoveries of Science and Technology’s Value
- Human and Legal Presumptions’ Value
Continuing with the second part of the ordinary civil trial in Chihuahua, after exploring its basics in the entry called Basics of the Ordinary Civil Trial in Chihuahua, Mexico Part I, it is time to take a deeper plunge into how civil trials operate in reality and how courts weigh the evidence presented in the hearings according to the Code of Civil Procedures of the State of Chihuahua. Thus, in this post, I will deal with the following issues: 1) the nature and rules of Chihuahua’s civil evidence, 2) the burden of proof of the parties, and finally, 3) the weight and formal assessment of the evidence. Lastly, it is worth mentioning that in future entries, I will deal with the case adjudication, legal remedies parties have to challenge the judgment (which I already did here Chihuahua’s Ordinary Civil Trial Part III. Case Adjudication and Its Challenge) how it’s enforced, and how you can recover the legal fees you spent on a civil trial. Let’s start.
1)Evidence’s Nature and Rules
Under article 276 of the Civil Procedures Code, courts shall only recognize as valid evidence the following:
I.- Confession
II.- Public documents
III.- Private documents
IV.- Expert opinions
V.- Judicial inspection
VI.- Testimony
VII.- Photographs, document copies, fingerprints, digital or computer records, and, in general, all those elements provided by the discoveries of science and technology technology
VIII.- Human and legal presumptions
I.- Confession
This proof is known in lay terms as a declaration and, in my opinion, it doesn’t work to reveal the truth of the case because, unlike other countries where attorneys can question parties nonstop about the disputed issues, in Mexico, due to the confessional formality, it’s useless and low-paced. Let’s see why.
The code defines confession as the acceptance of controversial facts by one of the parties, and it can be done by filing a civil complaint, answering it, or making assertions. The most used method is making assertions, performed in the oral trial hearing.
Its performance consists of rendering affirmations that the party must accept or deny, and also, he may explain further, but it’s not obligated. However, no questions from the attorney can be raised, even to clarify the answers. Only from the judge if he thinks it’s appropriate—rarely does this happen—.
Affirmations also have rules that must be articulated clearly and precisely, not be misleading or insidious, or contain more than a single fact. One example of an affirmation, its answer, and how could it be barred from questioning about that answer would be this:
You recognize you transferred your assets with the sole intention of being insolvent for its creditors, including my client.
Answer: No. That wasn’t the reason.
You accept that you transferred your assets without reason at all.
Answer: No.
If we really want to know the truth, the natural inquiry is to seek clarification of more information about the fact by asking one common sense question: Why, then, did you transfer your assets? But as I said, attorneys cannot formulate straight answers to the parties, making this confessional proof useless.
The only fictional utility of such proof is when one of the parties doesn’t attend the Oral Trial Hearing because, as attorneys, we can write our affirmations and provide a copy in a sealed envelope to the court. Once the court realizes the party doesn’t show up, it shall open the envelope and weigh the affirmations. If they are formulated according to the statutes, the court shall approve them, and the party shall be declared ‘confessed’ or that what was stated is considered to be presumably true.
Fortunately, the National Code of Civil and Family Procedure (which has not yet come into force for the state of Chihuahua) derogated such useless proof and, in its place was created in its article 284 a new figure called the declaration of the parties, which, finally, consists in articulating questions to the opposite party with more fluidity. When that national code comes into force, I will talk about all the marvelous changes, but for now, it’s important to know what to expect in Chihuahua nowadays.
II.- Public and Private Documents
The statutes define documents as elements that, due to their objective nature, record in themselves the memory of a fact through written language or a printed image. Documents that are divided between public and private.
The law states that public documents shall be those in which an official with public faith intervenes, such as public deeds, judgments, official reports, etc., and more listed examples in the law.
On the contrary, private documents are those that lack public faith but whose document is issued by a particular. Therefore, photocopies are not considered private documents.
One essential issue about documents is that if parties present a private document, they must ‘perfect’ it by requesting its signatory expressly recognize it. If he fails to do so, the court may devalue the document’s legal weight while issuing its final judgment as long as the opposing party has objected to its authenticity and probative weight in the preliminary hearing.
Documents Written in a Foreign Language
As I stated in the basics of the ordinary civil trial, in Chihuahua, the official language for civil processes is Spanish. Consequently, all documents that parties offer to the trial shall be presented in the original language and its Spanish translation. Nevertheless, the code doesn’t require an official translation by a licensed translator. Still, if the opposing party doesn’t agree with the translation or has doubts. In that case, he shall express his arguments to the court, and in the preliminary hearing, the court shall appoint a licensed translator to translate, again, the foreign documents.
III.- Expert Opinions
This proof stems when special knowledge is needed from science, art, technique, trade, or industry that will reveal information for the case. Its offer starts by appointing the expert witness who will carry out the proof in the civil complaint or its answer, specifying his expertise and degree and the name of the proof’s science, art, or technique. If parties fail to do so, the court must reject this evidence in the preliminary hearing.
Moreover, when parties offer this proof in their writing, they must delimit the points or questionary of the proof. Again, if they fail to do so, the court must reject the proof, too. Finally, there shall be only one examination form composed of both—and, in some cases, three— parties’s points that experts must answer.
On the other hand, if all legal requirements are met for this proof, the judge in the preliminary hearing shall admit it, and he shall grant three business days for the expert witnesses to accept in writing their duty. If the expert witness fails to accept his charge without fault of the offeror, that party can appoint a substitute, but if the expert witness does not accept his duty, let’s say because his fee is not guaranteed, the court must discard that proof, and only the opposing party’s proof shall be heard in court unless both have proof have been rejected.
After both experts accept their charge, the court shall grant them ten business days to issue their expert opinion, which shall be presented at the Oral Trial Hearing, where all parties and the judge may ask questions and refute their conclusions.
In extraordinary cases, when the parties’ experts render their opinions, and these are substantially contradictory, a third-party expert acting as ‘official’ shall be appointed by the court—whose fees must be paid equally by both parties, not the government— to resolve the issue and render its opinion in an extraordinary hearing.
As you will see when I deal with how Mexican courts weigh and value evidence, even if that third-party expert ‘clarifies’ the issue, if the court concludes that stills his expertise or conclusions are not logical, it may take the opposite side and choose as valid the opposite opinion. Even in some strange cases, it shall conclude that it isn’t possible to resolve the issue due to the poor quality of the expert witnesses or the material they studied.
IV.- Judicial Inspection
This kind of proof involves that parties, accompanied by a court clerk, can inspect objects, real estate, and individuals with or without the assistance of expert witnesses and a photographic series of the inspection.
The party who offers this proof must precisely indicate the matters on which the inspection shall focus, and again, according to the strict rule principle in the civil procedure, neither the judge nor the court clerk before, at the moment of the inspection, or even after, can amend those ambiguous and faulty points. For this reason, the attorney must know how to draft the matters of the proofs.
If this proof meets all the abovementioned requirements, the court shall admit and set a date and hour for the inspection. Finally, during the examination, the court clerk will draw an act about what he perceived during the inspection, as long as the comments from both parties, their attorneys, and experts attach, if applicable, the photographic series taken during the inspection.
V.-Testimony
By law, all individuals who may be aware of facts that could solve the case would be eligible to be witnesses because if the court finds it necessary to summon an individual to render his testimony in a case, he cannot reject that summons. After all, he may even be arrested if he doesn’t cooperate. Therefore, in the law, we have two kinds of witnesses: 1) voluntary and 2) hostile. Lastly, all witnesses, no matter their nature, must be mentioned in the civil complaint or its answer. If the parties fail to do so, the court shall not admit the witnesses’ testimony at the preliminary hearing.
The voluntary witness implies that parties, when they offer their witnesses, state they can bring their own witnesses to the hearing without problems, so they do not need to be summoned by the court.
On the other hand, if parties are aware of those who might witness facts that could help solve the case but are not committed to coming to the court and rendering their testimony, they still have an option, making them appear as hostile witnesses.
A hostile witness is a third party that, due to animosity towards the offeror party, fear of reprisals, or for work reasons, cannot testify at his request at the Oral Trial Hearing and, for these reasons, shall be summoned by the court at the party’s request.
In this kind of proof, parties can formulate open questions that witnesses must answer, and after their testimony is rendered, the counterpart may cross-examine them. There are a few rules about how the questions must be tailored, such as: 1) both questions and the cross-exam must be formulated verbally, 2) questions must have a direct relationship with the controversial points, 3) questions shall not be contrary to the morality, and 4) questions must be formulated in clear and precise terms, ensuring that in one question is not involved more than one fact.
VI.- Elements Provided by the Discoveries of Science
In reality, the scope of this kind of proof is the broadest of those mentioned above because it covers issues regarding photographs, photostat copies, fingerprint records, digital or computer science, and, in general, all those elements derived from the advances of science and technology.
There are only three rules when parties offer this kind of proof:
- In the case of electronic records, the offering party must express with complete accuracy the full name of the system or electronic page from which it was obtained.
- Photostatic copies must be certified as to their accuracy by a notary public from their original.
- The party offering this proof must indicate the facts or circumstances they want to prove. In addition, to analyze the proof, parties must provide the court with the necessary devices or elements so that the court may perceive the sounds and images of the electronic records.
VII.-Human and Legal Presumptions
This innocuous proof can make a big difference when issuing the judgment, so both parties should always offer it. In reality, it’s not a proof itself, but it serves to unite other evidence or indications that appear in the record to prove facts hitherto unknown.
In this way, presumptions shall be understood as the conclusion over an unknown fact obtained by inferring from a fact known due to the logical and natural link between both.
There is a legal presumption when the law establishes it and when the consequence arises immediately and directly from it (for example, the debtor is up to date with payments from years ago if he exhibits receipts from recent months in court). The party with a legal presumption in its favor must only prove the fact on which the presumption is based.
There is human presumption when a fact is duly proven, another is deduced that is an ordinary consequence of that. (For example, if a person is found unconscious with blood on the head while another is standing in front of him with a bloody bat, it raises the presumption that the person who attacked the first person was the one grabbing the bat)
The criteria for human presumptions is broader and admits evidence to the contrary. In this proof, the judge uses the rules of logic and maxims of experience the most.
2) The Burden of Proof
Covering the burden of proof for civil trial in Chihuahua implies dealing with all kinds of civil actions that the Civil Code regulates. This is due to the fact that what parties must prove in court depends on their claim. Still, The Code of Civil Procedures of the State of Chihuahua, in its article 270, establishes general rules about this topic:
Article 270.- The plaintiff must prove the facts constituting her action and the defendant those of its pleas (excepciones)
The party who denies a fact shall only be forced to prove:
I.- When the denial implies the express affirmation of a fact.
II.- When the legal presumption in favor of one of the parties is denied.
III.- When the capacity and standing to appear in court is denied.
IV.- When the denial is a constitutive element of the civil action.
Beyond these rules, parties must thoroughly examine the statutes and judicial criteria that construe them of the kind of civil action they filed to comply with the burden of proof under the premise that if they fail to do so, they will not be able to prove the civil action they attempted due to their evidentiary negligence, which in my experience happens a lot.
3) Weigh and Formal Value of Evidence
In Chihuahua, judges must follow formal rules from statutes to grant value to certain evidence. But once parties meet those rules, judges have the liberty to weigh the evidentiary scope of those proofs by their own criteria and rules of logic.
Formal rules apply, for example, when one party offers a document stating it’s public. Still, once the judge studied it, he realized that its true nature was a private document, and the offeror must have offered its perfection (for example, requesting signature recognition) for that private documentary. Another example is when one party presents a photographic copy and offers it as an element provided by the discoveries of science but fails to certify that copy with a notary public, as the statutes demand.
When formal rules for evidence are not met, judges must discard the value intended by parties but can still serve—in a few cases.
Meanwhile, courts’ liberty to weigh the actual scope of the evidence rests in the rules of logic and maxims of experience. Differences between these two methods of evidentiary assessment are duly explained in the following judicial criterion:
“EVIDENCE. THEIR PROBATORY VALUE INVOLVES THE SATISFACTION OF THE FORMAL REQUIREMENTS ESTABLISHED BY THE STATUTES, WHILE THEIR SCOPE REFERS TO THE ANALYSIS CARRIED OUT BY THE JUDGE FOLLOWING LOGICAL AND REASONABLE RULES[1].
The assessment of the evidence in a process by the judge attends to two moments: the formal and the substantive. The formal aspect addresses the legal requirements that a kind of proof must meet for it to be granted a certain value, which is preceded by the stages of its offer, admission, preparation (if its constitution is in the process), and exposure of that proof in the hearing. Once the formal aspect has been overcome, the judge attends to the substantive aspect, in which he determines, through the rules of critical thinking and logic, whether the evidence in question is related to the facts alleged by its offerer. Likewise, each of the stages described above obeys different procedural periods in the formation of evidence, that is, the admission of evidence only considers how it was offered but cannot guarantee its proper preparation. This last circumstance does not presuppose that its presentation is in accordance with the law and, finally, that if all the formal stages of the proof have been completed, it must, without fail, cause full conviction in the judge concerning the intended fact to be demonstrated. From the above, it is plain that even though in practice there is a tendency to confuse evidentiary value and scope, these concepts are not equivalent since, it is reiterated, while the first ensures that the formal requirements have been met, the latter is totally independent since it moves away from the formal requirements imposed by the statutes and rests onto the critical thinking of the judge”.
These differences may be understood with a quick example regarding the actio pauliana, which implies the defense of a creditor from fraudulent acts carried out by his debtor, such as divesting or transferring his assets to become insolvent.
In such civil action, the burden of proof regarding the debtor’s solvency rests on him. However, proving the acts attributed to insolvency is the responsibility of the plaintiff. In that last case, if the plaintiff tried to comply with his burden of proof by offering just witnesses whose declaration in court meets all the legal requirements, like their declaration is uniform and related to the facts of the lawsuit, etc., Such proof would only meet the formal requirements, but not the substantive ones, because the testimony proof can only prove things that people witness and happen in reality, but with its limitations.
The proper proof, for example, that the defendant divested or transferred his assets may be public documents (public deeds), a judicial inspection of his accounting books with the aid of an accounting expert, etc. The above is true because the judge may ponder what a mere witness could perceive and conclude that they are not useful. For example, the plaintiff loudly stated he would divest his assets to avoid paying his debtor, or the plaintiff bragged about hiding his assets. These kinds of testimonies are insufficient to comply with the burden of proof provided in the law, doctrine, and precedents.
Therefore, even if you are not an attorney, you should always check that the evidence offered by your attorney is consistent with what is intended to be proven because even when the formalities established by law are met, its probative value may be useless for proving the claim. The previous conclusion is also supported by the following judicial criterion: EVIDENCE. TO DETERMINE ITS APPROPIATENESS, IT MUST BE EXAMINED HOW IT ILLUSTRATES THE FACTS TO BE DEMONSTRATED OF THE CLAIM[2].
Confession’s Value
Regarding this proof, lawmakers stated confession has entire value when the following conditions are met:
I.- The confession is made by a person capable of being obligated
II.- The confession is made with full knowledge and without duress or violence
III.- The confession is derived from a fact related to the party and concerning the legal dispute.
IV.- That the confession has been made in accordance with the provisions of the law
On the other hand, confession proof may be produced by the parties’ declarations in the Oral Hearing Trial, but since the drafting of the civil complaint, its answer or other motions. Consequently, paying attention to how you write them is critical because courts have the faculty to broach up and consider topics that even the counterpart didn’t allege but would help resolve the case. Provision that it’s contained in article 274 of the code[3].
Lastly, as I stated before, although one proof has full-formal value according to the law, it does not become untouchable nor exempt from being analyzed through the lens of the rules of logic. For this reason, lawmakers in article 347 of the code reaffirmed that rule while stating:
“The confession will not produce the full evidentiary effect in those cases that come accompanied by other evidence or presumptions that make it implausible or reveal the intention of defrauding third parties.”
Document’s Value
The law is clear about public documents. Once documents meet the legal requirements to be considered public, they shall have entire value, except in cases where the counterpart demonstrated the document was counterfeited or incomplete, etc.
The last hypothesis is common and very important. Sometimes, paralegals or even attorneys don’t realize that public documents obtained from public registries, such as The Civil Registry of the State of Chihuahua or the Public Registry of Property and Commerce, their workers erred in including all the sheets and attachments to the public document. Then, when a droit counterpart notices it, he may object it in the preliminary hearing (being well aware that parties cannot cure their omissions and negligences during the trial, according to the strict rule principle), arguing some of its pages are amiss. That’s enough for the court to change the evidentiary value of a public document to a mere hint or even discard the proof.
Notwithstanding the aforementioned, judgments shall always remain as public documents, and their validity can only be vacated by another judgment issued by a higher court or, in rare cases, when attorneys are so negligent and exhibit a simple copy of the judgment. In that case, it shall have no probative value.
Furthermore, private documents may provide entire value when recognized by their authors, such as the opposing party or a third party. Therefore, when a private document is offered in civil cases, attorneys must seek a private document’s perfection through legal procedures established in the law, such as the summons of the author of the private document for its recognition, rendering an expert witness in graphoscopy who weighs the signatures, etc.
Finally, lawmakers stated special provisions about private documents ‘verified’ by witnesses, in the sense of which shall have the value of their testimony according to the rules of that proof.
Expert Witnesses Opinions’ Value
There are not many provisions from the law regarding the formal value of this kind of proof and its rules for assessing its scope since lawmakers stated the assessment of the expert opinions shall be left to the prudent discretion of the judge, who finds no limits other than clarifying the statutory law on which the decision was based on, as well as the motives or arguments for it applicability at the case.
This proof, as it has many procedural requirements for its admission in a case, does not contemplate an indicative or full formal value when it meets those requirements, so when courts study it, it is based on the laws of logic, maxims of experience, precedents from higher courts, and the scientific method. Topics that, due to their length, I won’t address in this entry.
Moreover, remember that the expert witness must attend the Oral Trial Hearing, explain his conclusions to the judge and the parties, and be poised to answer questions they may formulate and objections. There is when the judge might realize expert witnesses are not suitable to provide accurate information to the court and may appoint an ‘official’ expert to resolve the issue or simply consider that proof inconsequential in his ruling. Hence, hiring a capable attorney and an expert witness is essential. Choose wisely.
Finally, there are many precedents whose texts guide lower courts on how to assess this proof. Mexico’s Supreme Court of Justice issued one of them, which is used for civil cases in Chihuahua State:
“EXPERT WITNESS OPINION. THE MOTIVATION OF THE EXPERT IS A USEFUL CRITERION FOR HIS ASSESSMENT[4].
The object of an expert witness opinion is to assist in the administration of justice, consisting of an expert in a particular science, technique, or art, providing the judge with knowledge of the subject in which he is an expert and of which the judge lacks because that knowledge escapes the accumulation of wisdom that a person of average cultural level possesses; knowledge that is also essential to resolve a specific controversy. Now, precisely because the judge lacks the knowledge on which an expert relies to prepare his opinion, it is difficult to determine its evidentiary scope, mainly if two or more experts, regarding the same topic, issue different opinions or even contradictory. In these cases, it is helpful to analyze the method and the scientific, artistic, or technical foundation that supports the opinions of the experts because if their opinions, in addition to presenting them, the experts explain the premises, rules, or foundations corresponding to the science, technique or art in question, on which they have based to analyze the specific point on which they express their conclusions and explain how said premises applied to the specific case, also lead to the conclusion to which they arrived and constitutes the content of their opinions, using a convincing method appropriate to the matter in question, it shall be relatively simple to motivate the assessment of said expert opinion. This method of evidentiary assessment is also consistent with the nature of the expert evidence, which meets its objective to the extent that it gears the judge with the scientific, technical, or artistic knowledge necessary to resolve”.
Judicial Inspection’s Value
Only one article regulates the formal value of judicial inspections—358— which states this proof shall have entire value when practiced on objects that do not require special or scientific knowledge. Therefore, there is not much to tell about it except its offering rules and how to draft it in the civil complaint or its answer.
The suitability of this proof is most used in litigations regarding real estate, for example, to prove the plaintiff’s possession over certain land, etc. Still, the most used form of this proof is combined with an expert witness’s opinion.
Testimonies’ Value
This proof is equal to the expert witness since lawmakers granted the entire value of it to the prudent discretion of the judge, who finds no limits other than clarifying the statutory law or precedent on which the decision was based, as well as the motives or arguments for it applicability at the case.
Many precedents, some binding and some not binding illustrate how courts shall value the scope of testimonies in adjudicating the case. Nevertheless, its weight resides in the rules of logic, maxims of the experience, and the general principles of the law.
Elements Provided by the Discoveries of Science and Technology’s Value
Lawmakers stated that this kind of proof, again, is left to the prudent discretion of the judge with the limits of the rules of logic and maxim of experience. However, this proof has only two formal rules aimed at the judge before weighing value in its judgment: 1) he won’t grant value to photocopies if they are not certified by a notary public, and 2) to assess the value of data messages through technological platforms, first it shall be estimated the reliability of the method in which it was generated, archived, communicated or preserved.
The last one is important. According to binding precedents, when parties offer proof conversations from digital platforms, they must perfect it with an expert opinion, for example, in computer science or a report request to the company that stores the data so that it can respond if the conversation offered matches what is held on its sites (which is often difficult because the companies are foreign) Hence, the custom is to offer a computer expert to perfect the messages.
Human and Legal Presumptions’ Value
Legislators stated that legal presumptions shall have entire formal value and can only be refuted by other kinds of proof. On the other hand, as you may remember when I talked about this proof, its existence and scope depend on every civil action regulated in the Civil Code of the State of Chihuahua.
You can find an example of a legal presumption in article 771[5] of the civil code concerning the civil action denominated prescripción positiva or usucapión, which in Anglo-Saxon systems is known as ‘adverse possession’. In that civil action, the plaintiff has as a burden of proof, among other things, to prove he has possessed the land for a certain time (five years of good faith and ten of bad faith in Chihuahua)
Now, imagine the plaintiff filed his lawsuit on September 2023, arguing he has possessed what is considered his land since 2013 of bad faith, and to prove that possession, he offers public service receipts in his name for the years 2013, 2015, and 2023. As we can see, there are some years in which the possession of the land is not proved. However, with article 771 of the civil code, the court may conclude the legal requirement of possessing the land in bad faith for ten years is met. That’s the utility of legal presumptions.
Of course, legal presumptions are not closed from discussion. On the contrary, being aware of those presumptions, defendants can offer another proof to refute it, and that implies that their attorneys examine the statutes thoroughly and consider which facts plaintiffs are exempt from proving.
Lastly, human presumptions are different since lawmakers provided formal rules in article 363 of the code to weigh them in courts’ judgments, which, given its importance, I quote:
“ARTICLE 363.- The courts, according to the nature of the facts, their evidence, and the logical link and natural relationship that exists between the known truth and that which is sought, shall appreciate the value of the
human presumptions to the degree of being able to consider that they acquire entire value as a whole. For the presumptions referred to in this article to have probative value, they must meet the following requirements:
I.- That the facts on which they are based are fully proven.
II.- That there is a concurrence of several hints or indications that unite them.
III.- The hints are independent, so if eliminated or destroyed, the others can exist to demonstrate the fact.
IV.- That hints are so related and harmonized in such a way that, together, they make it impossible to falsify the fact wanted to be proved.
Within the generic concept of hint, this article includes the facts, circumstances, or antecedents that, having an intimate relationship with the fact whose existence is pretended to be demonstrated, allow establishing a presumption about said existence”.
In conclusion, as I have already gone too far into the topics discussed, in the next blog post, I will discuss the rules for adjudicating civil trials, their judgment, how to challenge them (appeal remedy and Amparo proceedings), and probably in another entry, what are the rules to enforce a judgment and how to recover legal fees in Mexico. Stay tuned for more.
By Omar Gómez
Partner
beLegal abogados S.C
Abogados en Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, México
Visit my personal website www.ogomezabogado.com
Contact the firm at [email protected] or call (656) 774-75-73 for English assistance.
[1] Title: I.3o.C.665 C. THIRD FEDERAL COLLEGIATE COURT OF CIVIL MATTERS OF THE FIRST CIRCUIT. Ninth Judicial Epoch. Not Binding Precedent. Digital Record: 170211.
[2] Title: I.3o.C.671 C. THIRD FEDERAL COLLEGIATE COURT IN CIVIL MATTERS OF THE FIRST CIRCUIT. Ninth Judicial Epoch. Not Binding Precedent. Digital Record: 170209.
[3] Article 274.- The courts shall consider, even if the parties do not request it, the information and records contained in the judicial file that has accompanied the civil complaint and its answer.
[4] Title: 1a. CII/2011. First Chamber of the Mexican Supreme Court of Justice. Ninth Judicial Epoch. Not Binding Precedent. Digital Record: 161783.
[5] Article 771.- The current possessor who proves to have possessed in a previous time, has in his favor the presumption of having possessed in the interim.