Smart contract disputes: where and how they are resolved
A smart contract is an agreement executed by code: the terms are written into program logic and performance happens automatically. Georgia has no separate procedural statute for smart contracts — disputes over them are heard under the general rules of the Civil Procedure Code. This is good news: the court is not helpless before technical matters — the Code contains instruments that suit precisely such disputes.
The distinctiveness of a smart contract dispute lies in three things: the evidence is mostly electronic; the decision was made by an algorithm, and assessing its behaviour requires special knowledge; and interim measures matter because assets move. All three matters are regulated by norms of the Procedure Code.
Electronic evidence
Under Article 134, written evidence comprises acts, documents, and business and personal letters containing information about circumstances relevant to the case. The corresponding part of the same article establishes that an electronic document, and a document confirmed by electronic signature and/or certified, has evidentiary force. For a smart contract this means: transaction records, code versions and system logs are submitted to the court as written evidence.
Where a party cannot obtain evidence from the person who holds it, it may apply to the court for its requisition; the application is possible even for homogeneous documents without indicating specific requisites, if it is substantiated that circumstances relevant to the case may be established through them.
Expertise and its assessment
Under Article 162, where a judge lacks special knowledge on a question connected with the examination of a case, the court may, on its own initiative, appoint an expertise at any stage of the examination, if the interpretation of the question has essential significance for deciding the case and a decision cannot be made without it. The parties may also independently ensure the conduct of an expertise and submit the conclusion to the court.
In a smart contract dispute the classical questions of expertise are: what the code did in the given conditions, whether its behaviour corresponded to the parties' agreement, and whether the executed result could have been different. Article 172 regulates the outcome: the expert's conclusion is not binding on the court, but its rejection must be substantiated in the decision or ruling. Expertise thus does not replace the judge — it gives him a reasoned foundation.