Digital evidence has changed where proof of a dispute is found: today it is not necessarily in a signed contract, an original receipt or a stamped document. Increasingly, the facts that must be proven in a proceeding are recorded in digital media: a WhatsApp conversation, an email, a receipt generated by an electronic platform or a screenshot. These are not new ways of presenting documents, but information that is created and stored differently from traditional documentation.
This poses a particular challenge. Digital information may be relevant to proving a fact and, at the same time, raise questions about its origin, integrity or the way it was obtained. It is therefore not enough to determine whether that information may be admitted in the proceeding. It is also necessary to examine what supports its reliability and how the opposing party may challenge it.
That need to verify digital information partly explains the degree of caution that surrounded its procedural treatment for years. The usual answer was a prudent one: it could be admitted, but with reservations, and the party offering it was expected to reinforce its authenticity. The problem is that this caution sometimes placed digital evidence in a different position from other private documents, without that difference following from the rules governing its assessment. This does not mean, of course, that all digital information must be taken as valid simply because it exists: like any other means of evidence, it must come from a lawful source and pass the general filters of relevance and usefulness required by our legislation. Today, however, that approach is changing as a result of recent criteria from the Civil Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice of El Salvador.
I- The statutory starting point
Our legislation already provides the framework to resolve this discussion, and it does so from two different angles, both anchored in the principle of freedom of evidence. The Civil and Commercial Procedure Code (the “CPCM”) sets sound judicial discretion (sana crítica) as the general rule for assessing evidence, reserving a system of pre-assigned value for documentary evidence (Article 416 CPCM). Within that regime, the starting point is clear: private instruments constitute full proof of their content and of those who execute them, unless their authenticity is challenged; if the challenge does not succeed, they retain that full value, and only if it succeeds are they assessed under sound judicial discretion (Article 341, second paragraph, CPCM). The Code also does not limit the concept of an instrument to written documents: Article 343 CPCM extends it to photographs, drawings, plans and “other similar instruments”, a formula that allows the category to be projected onto other forms of information that, without looking like a traditional document, serve an equivalent evidentiary function.
The text of the law, then, never expressly imposed that different treatment on evidence created in a digital environment. In fact, the Code already contained a route designed for what does not come on paper: Article 325 CPCM, within the rules on physical or tangible evidence, requires the parties to introduce through testimony any objects, photographs, videos and media storing data, images, voice or information, identifying them to the opposing party and to the witness so that the witness, through examination, may lay the foundations for their admissibility. That route, however, is not the one applied in practice to screenshots or messaging conversations: courts did not require them to be introduced through a witness under Article 325 CPCM but, within the documentary regime of Article 341 CPCM itself, added an almost expert-level requirement as to the integrity of the file that this article does not demand of any other private instrument.
II- How did that caution play out in practice?
A case decided by the First Civil Chamber of the First Central Section, Ref. 20-7CM2-2021, illustrates that stage. In a dispute over the return of a lease deposit, the appellant sought to prove the condition in which the property had been handed over by means of WhatsApp conversations. The Chamber upheld the rejection of that evidence: there was no way to rule out manipulation of the digital files, so the evidence was held inadmissible for lack of usefulness, even though no one disputed that the conversation existed and there was no evidence to the contrary. The Chamber acknowledged that, under the CPCM, the general rule is sound judicial discretion, except for private documents, which are subject to the pre-assigned value system of Article 341 CPCM; even so, it required technological evidence to offer a guarantee that this article does not demand of any other private instrument.
The practical result was an asymmetry: an unchallenged paper contract enjoyed full evidentiary value without further formalities, while a digital conversation, equally unchallenged, first had to pass a reliability test that the law reserved for cases in which an actual challenge existed.
III- The shift: the Civil Chamber revisits the concept of a document and its evidentiary value
The judgment of the Civil Chamber issued on 19 May 2025, Ref. 308-CAL-2024, addresses the problem at its conceptual root. The Chamber holds that the concept of a document can no longer be confined to graphic expression on paper, since technological development has produced other manifestations of human will —among them the electronic file— that also fit within that category. If an electronic file is already, conceptually, a document, it does not require additional authentication requirements: from the outset it falls under the same regime as Article 341 CPCM.
On that basis, the Chamber reaffirms the rule that evidentiary value depends on the procedural conduct of the opposing party, citing its own earlier case law: “this court has referred specifically to printouts of website content, emails and printouts of social media accounts such as Twitter, and in that regard has held that their evidentiary value will depend on the procedural attitude of the opposing party, who may or may not challenge them through the means established for that purpose, so that, failing such a challenge, they will have full evidentiary value”. The criterion, then, did not arise to solve a specific instant-messaging problem; it already applied to a broad range of digital media. It is also a line of reasoning that lower courts have begun to replicate.
IV- What remains after this journey?
Article 341 CPCM has not changed: it still grants full evidentiary value to a private instrument that has not been effectively challenged. What has changed is the answer to a question that used to be resolved with excessive caution: faced with an email or a screenshot, it is no longer appropriate to require, by default, an advance technical guarantee of its integrity as a precondition for admission. By recognizing that an electronic file is, conceptually, a document, the Civil Chamber confirms that this type of evidence is governed from the outset by the simpler rule of Article 341 CPCM: full proof, unless authenticity is actually challenged.
The point, then, is this: the discussion about a screenshot should no longer begin by determining whether the medium is reliable enough to be admitted, but by verifying whether the opposing party, having had the opportunity to challenge its authenticity, actually did so. If it did not, the electronic document produces full evidentiary value, just like any other private instrument. That is the concrete contribution of the Civil Chamber in 308-CAL-2024: not to create a new rule, but to close the door on the digital origin of evidence serving, on its own, as a reason to treat it differently.
In practice, this criterion reinforces two concrete tasks: keeping an orderly record of the emails, messages and electronic receipts that support each transaction, and promptly reviewing the authenticity of the digital evidence offered by the other side, because staying silent about it amounts to accepting its full evidentiary value. If your company faces a dispute in which the evidence sits in digital media, it is worth assessing with legal counsel how to document, submit or challenge that information in the proceeding.