Recharacterisation in law (and sometimes in accountancy) means the treatment of a certain course of conduct in a different manner to which the participants describe it.
In some civil law countries, judges are empowered to "recharacterise the facts" of a case to make the charges more closely align with the evidence.
In these systems, the legal charges contained in the indictment are only suggestions from the public prosecutor to the court.
[3] In others, this right to suspend the trial is only implicated if the recharacterisation results in more serious charges.
For example, in Street v Mountford [1985] 1 AC 809 the House of Lords confirmed that an agreement described as a license for non-exclusive occupation of a property should, in fact, be treated as a lease for the purposes of determining the licensees' (or tenants') rights, although Lord Templeman did not actually use the phrase "recharacterisation" in his speech.