Also known as: judicially noticed · take judicial notice · judicially noticed facts
Written by attorneys — see sources below.
A court's acceptance of an adjudicative fact that is not subject to reasonable dispute because it is generally known within the territorial jurisdiction or capable of accurate and ready determination from sources whose accuracy cannot reasonably be questioned. The doctrine dispenses with the need for formal proof and permits the court to treat the fact as established.
In a patent infringement trial between Southern Logic and Maple Software, the judge displayed an app store record on a screen during open court and announced she would treat the first public release date of Maple's app as established. The date helped determine the timing of disputed features without any party having introduced the record as evidence. The noticed fact narrowed the issues the jury needed to resolve.
After a rate proceeding hearing closed, the presiding judge considered only the outage evidence Andrew and the utility had presented plus any facts meeting judicial notice standards. She refrained from downloading additional maps or reading social media complaints herself. The resulting order rested solely on the record and properly noticed facts.
Maple Software supplied printouts from the U.S. Naval Observatory showing exact sunrise and sunset times on the outage date. The court accepted those times as established once the official source was provided. The noticed facts determined whether rooftop inspection was feasible at the relevant hour.
After the judge announced she would notice the developer conference size, Southern Logic promptly requested an opportunity to contest both the propriety of notice and the precise scope of the fact. The court scheduled argument before finalizing the instruction to the jury. The hearing ensured the parties could address the accuracy and relevance of the noticed fact.
Tanya relied on the Property Inspection Manual during direct examination. The court accepted the Manual as a reliable authority after taking judicial notice of its widespread professional use. Tanya was permitted to read the relevant statements into evidence but the Manual itself was not admitted as an exhibit.
In the challenge to the contraceptive distribution statute, the Court declined to assume judicially that vaginal foam posed health risks requiring medical advice. No record evidence or indisputable source supported that proposition. The absence of noticed facts left the state without support for its classification of the product.
On April 6, 1967, William R. Baird delivered a lecture on birth control at Boston University. As part of the presentation, he showed a film, displayed contraceptive devices in their original packages, and at the conclusion invited members of the audience to take contraceptive articles from the stage. A young woman requested and received a package of Emko vaginal foam from Baird, after which he was arrested and charged with exhibiting and giving away a contraceptive device in violation of Massachusetts General Laws, c. 272, § 21. Baird was convicted following a bench trial in the Massachusetts Superior Court. The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts set aside the conviction for exhibiting the contraceptives on First Amendment grounds but upheld the conviction for giving away the foam by a four-to-three vote. Baird then filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, which dismissed the petition. The Court of Appeals for the First Circuit vacated the dismissal and remanded with directions to grant the writ discharging Baird. The Supreme Court noted probable jurisdiction and heard the appeal brought by the Sheriff of Suffolk County, Massachusetts. The Massachusetts statute, as interpreted by the state courts, makes it a felony for anyone other than a registered physician or pharmacist to dispense contraceptives intended for the prevention of pregnancy, with distribution authorized only to married persons upon prescription.
View caseA court must take judicial notice when a party requests it and supplies the necessary information from a qualifying source. The rule distinguishes this mandatory obligation from the court's discretionary power to notice facts on its own initiative.
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On timely request a party is entitled to be heard on both the propriety of taking notice and the nature of the fact. The right to be heard exists even if the court has already noticed the fact before notifying the party.
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A judge may not investigate facts independently and must consider only evidence presented by the parties together with facts that may properly be judicially noticed. Post-hearing searches for case-specific information outside the record violate this prohibition.
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Yes. The reliability of a publication may be shown by judicial notice in addition to expert testimony. Once reliability is established the statements may be read into evidence though the publication itself is not received as an exhibit.
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…Commission shall prepare written rules for the conduct of its activities, shall have an official seal which shall be judicially noticed, and shall have its principal office in or near the District of Columbia (but it may meet or exercise any of its powers anywhere in the United States). (f) Staff director and general…