Case ID: or-app_27/html/0037-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "\n      SLOAN, S. J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Argued August 25,
    reversed and remanded October 4,
    reconsideration denied November 10, 1976,
    petition for review denied February 1, 1977
    In the Matter of David A. Hynes, Alleged to be a Mentally Ill Person. STATE OF OREGON, Respondent, v. DAVID A. HYNES, Appellant.
    
    (No. MI 42596, CA 6114)
    554 P2d 1030
    
      Susan F. Mandiberg, Metropolitan Public Defender, Portland, argued the cause and filed the briefs for appellant.
    
      Karen H. Green, Certified Law Student, Salem, argued the cause for respondent. With her on the brief were Lee Johnson, Attorney General, and W. Michael Gillette, Solicitor General, Salem.
    Before Schwab, Chief Judge, and Tanzer, Judge, and Sloan, Senior Judge.
    SLOAN, S. J.
   SLOAN, S. J.

The court below, in this mental commitment hearing, took judicial notice of the record of a prior commitment proceeding concerning David Hynes. State v. O’Neill, 274 Or 59, 545 P2d 97 (1976), held that judicial notice of prior court files was improper. The state, however, argues that O’Neill is inapplicable where the judicial notice is taken in the dispositional "phase” of a commitment hearing rather than in the adjudicative phase of the hearing. We must disagree. Whether or not ORS ch 426 now provides for a separate dispositional "phase” of the commitment process, we read State v. O’Neill, supra, as precluding taking judicial notice of prior court files in any event.

Reversed and remanded.