Queensland Consolidated Acts

EVIDENCE ACT 1977 - SECT 22

22 Commission, request or order to examine witnesses

(1) The Supreme Court or a judge thereof, on application made under the Rules of the Supreme Court, shall have the same powers to issue a commission, request or order to examine witnesses for the purpose of civil proceedings in any court other than the Supreme Court as it or the judge has for the purpose of civil proceedings in the Supreme Court.

(2) The Rules of the Supreme Court, with such adaptations as the circumstances may require, shall apply and extend to a commission, request or order to examine witnesses issued by authority of subsection (1) and to all proceedings taken thereunder as if the commission, request or order were issued by authority of those rules.

(3) Subject to all just exceptions, the depositions taken upon the examination of a witness before an examiner by virtue of this section certified under the hand of the examiner are admissible in evidence, without proof of the signature to such certificate, unless it is proved that the witness is at the time of the hearing at which the depositions are offered in evidence within a convenient distance of the place of the hearing and able to attend.

(4) The costs of proceedings taken by virtue of this section shall be costs in the cause, unless otherwise directed either by the judge issuing the commission, request or order or by the court for the purpose of whose proceedings the examination is conducted.