Criminal Lawyers in Perjury in Civil Cases

Perjury in civil proceedings is regulated in Chapter VI of Title XX of the Spanish Criminal Code —"Crimes against the Administration of Justice"— and is an essential piece of the procedural guarantee system. The protected legal interest is the proper Administration of Justice and, indirectly, the patrimonial and personal interests of the parties that depend on the truthfulness of witness and expert evidence. The applicable provision is Art. 458.1 CP, which punishes with imprisonment of 6 months to 2 years and a fine of 3 to 6 months the witness who lies in their testimony in judicial proceedings; when the proceeding is civil —broadly, including commercial, labour and contentious-administrative jurisdictions—, this is the applicable penalty. The aggravated form under Art. 458.2 CP (1 to 3 years' imprisonment and a fine of 6 to 12 months) is reserved for false testimony given against the defendant in criminal proceedings. Consolidated Supreme Court case-law has refined the typical elements and clarified the relevance of intent and substantiality.

Active Subjects

The active subjects of the offence form a broader catalogue than commonly assumed. Typical subjects are witnesses judicially summoned who testify under oath before the court and experts, translators and interpreters (Art. 459 CP) who maliciously misrepresent in their report or translation (with the preceding penalties in their upper half and special disqualification for 6 to 12 years). Art. 460 CP separately punishes, with a fine of 6 to 12 months and 6 months to 3 years' suspension, anyone who, without substantially departing from the truth, alters it with reticence or inaccuracies. Excluded, under settled doctrine, are the parties to the civil proceedings in formal questioning (Art. 301 LEC), who have a different procedural status: they are not witnesses in the technical sense and their untruthfulness produces procedural effects (preclusion, ficta confessio) but no criminal liability for perjury. Similarly, declarations in mediation, conciliation or out-of-court settlement do not fall within the type, as they are not made before a court. The qualification of the active subject is decisive at the subsumption stage and is one of the first defence lines.

Forms, Retraction and Limitation

The methods of commission cover both the assertion of facts contrary to reality and the malicious omission of relevant circumstances, always requiring the inaccuracy to affect substantial points and not accessory or irrelevant ones for the judicial decision. Retraction under Art. 462 CP calls for a distinction that is often overlooked here: the exemption from punishment laid down in that provision applies only to false testimony given in criminal proceedings. In civil, employment, commercial or contentious-administrative proceedings, retraction does not exempt from punishment, because Art. 462 CP does not reach those procedures. Correcting the statement before judgment is rendered nevertheless retains real defensive value: it may ground the general mitigating circumstance of confession (Art. 21.4 CP), where it occurs before the witness learns that proceedings are directed against them, or of reparation of the harm (Art. 21.5 CP), and it weighs appreciably in the individualisation of the penalty. The statute of limitations is 5 years (Art. 131 CP, as a less serious offence), counted from consummation —placed by doctrine at the end of the false statement—. The offence of civil perjury frequently concurs with other types: procedural fraud (Art. 250.1.7 CP), simulation of a crime (Art. 457 CP), false denunciation (Art. 456 CP), use of forged document (Arts. 393 and 396 CP) and, where applicable, offences against moral integrity or privacy when the lie attacks fundamental personal rights.

Defence Strategy

The technical defence in civil perjury rests on four recurring axes. First, absence of intent: the offence requires direct intent, i.e., awareness and will to lie; perception errors, memory gaps, confusion from passage of time or honest conviction about disputed facts exclude typicality. Second, lack of substantiality: divergence must concern points relevant to the decision; accessory or secondary inaccuracies fall outside the type. Third, qualification of the testimony: if the statement was not formally given before a court or was not made under oath, the offence is not perfected. Fourth, verification of the declarant's procedural status: the frequent confusion between witness and party requires proving the declarant's technical condition in the underlying proceedings. The evidentiary strategy is usually articulated through handwriting or phonotechnical expert reports on documents or recordings, collation of mutually consistent testimonies, economic, medical or technical expert reports proving the factual impossibility of the statements, and the prior civil judgment itself when it rests on critical assessment of the challenged testimony.

Current Forensic Practice

In current forensic practice, civil perjury occupies a growing space in family proceedings (contested divorces, modifications of measures, custody and visitation), labour proceedings (disciplinary dismissals, monetary claims, workplace accidents), contentious-administrative proceedings (subsidies, sanctions, disciplinary files) and commercial proceedings (challenge of corporate resolutions, directors' liability, partner conflicts). Organic Law 1/2025 on Justice Service Efficiency and Act 1/2025 on Procedural Efficiency have promoted full recording of hearings, facilitating later detection and proof of falsehood in witness testimony. At Alonso Sala, we defend both those denounced for civil perjury —deploying all the technical lines described— and those harmed by false statements who need to articulate a criminal complaint coordinated with corresponding civil compensation actions. Early intervention is decisive: correcting the statement as soon as possible, even though in a civil case it does not trigger the exemption of Art. 462 CP —reserved for criminal proceedings—, allows the mitigating circumstance of confession to be built before proceedings are directed against the witness, and the final civil judgment can significantly compromise the evidentiary position in subsequent criminal proceedings.