Swiss Civil Procedure Code

¹Any third party may re­fuse to co­oper­ate:

a.

in es­tab­lish­ing facts that would ex­pose him or her or a close as­so­ci­ate as defined in Art­icle 165 to crim­in­al pro­sec­u­tion or civil li­ab­il­ity;

b.

to the ex­tent that the rev­el­a­tion of a secret would be pun­ish­able by vir­tue of Art­icle 321 SCC¹; aud­it­ors ex­cep­ted; however, with the ex­cep­tion of law­yers and cler­ics, third parties must co­oper­ate if they are sub­ject to a dis­clos­ure duty or if they have been re­leased from duty of secrecy, un­less they show cred­ibly that the in­terest in keep­ing the secret takes pre­ced­ence over the in­terest in find­ing the truth;

c.

in es­tab­lish­ing facts that have been con­fided in him or her in his or her of­fi­cial ca­pa­city as pub­lic of­fi­cial as defined in Art­icle 110 para­graph 3² SCC or as a mem­ber of a pub­lic au­thor­ity, or facts that have come to his or her at­ten­tion in ex­er­cising his or her of­fice; he or she must co­oper­ate if he or she is sub­ject to a dis­clos­ure duty or if he or she has been au­thor­ised to testi­fy by his or her su­per­i­or au­thor­ity;

d.³

when asked to testi­fy as an om­bud­sper­son, mar­riage or fam­ily coun­sel­lor or me­di­at­or on facts that have come to his or her at­ten­tion in the course of his or her activ­it­ies;

e.

when asked in his or her ca­pa­city as pro­fes­sion­al or aux­il­i­ary per­son en­gaged in the pub­lic­a­tion of in­form­a­tion in the ed­it­or­i­al part of a peri­od­ic­al to re­veal the iden­tity of the au­thor or the con­tent or source of his or her in­form­a­tion.

²The con­fid­ants of oth­er leg­ally pro­tec­ted secrets may re­fuse to co­oper­ate if they show cred­ibly that the in­terest in keep­ing the secret out­weighs the in­terest in es­tab­lish­ing the truth.

³The spe­cial pro­vi­sions of so­cial se­cur­ity law con­cern­ing the dis­clos­ure of data are re­served.