Opinion ID: 891663
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Municipal Ordinances are Law

Text: {13} The rule requiring proof of municipal ordinances as fact is not consistent with the role of courts with respect to law and fact. [D]etermination of the applicable law is an issue of law, not of fact. City of Cedar Rapids v. Cach, 299 N.W.2d 656, 660 (Iowa 1980). We agree that [a]s all law has become increasingly accessible and judges have tended to assume the duty to rule on the tenor of all law, the notion that [the process of treating law as fact and] part of judicial notice has become increasingly an anachronism. Evidence, after all, involves the proof of facts. How the law is fed into the judicial machine is more appropriately an aspect of the law pertaining to procedure. Dix, supra, § 335. {14} The reasons for distinguishing municipal ordinances as adjudicative facts, not law, are no longer compelling. See, e.g., id. ([A]s these [ordinances] become more accessible, the tendency is toward permitting the judges to do what perhaps they should have done in the beginning, that is, to rely on the diligence of counsel to provide the necessary materials, and accordingly to take notice of all law.); Fishman, supra, § 2.72 (stating that not judicially noticing municipal ordinances was understandable when trustworthy copies of such laws were hard to come by, but is difficult to justify today). The Hawai`i Supreme Court succinctly stated the two main reasons for the trend towards permitting judicial notice of foreign law, including municipal ordinances: accessibility and verifiability. State v. West, 95 Hawai`i 22, 18 P.3d 884, 888 n. 10 (2001). The reasons for the trend in treating municipal ordinances as law are interconnected: the increased accessibility of foreign law makes it more easily verifiable; in turn, like the [i]nternet, the usefulness of this ready availability is predicated on its trustworthiness. Factors affecting these dual justifications include: (1) publication, (2) codification, and (3) compilation. Id. (internal citations omitted). {15} These exact reasons have eroded the justification in our precedent for treating municipal ordinances as adjudicative facts which may not be judicially noticed by our courts on appeal. Municipal ordinances are no longer impossible to find outside of the municipality. It is true that they are not gathered in one uniform compilation, as are our state statutes. However, learning the contents of an ordinance no longer requires a trip to the government offices of a far-off town. The City of Aztec, for example, publishes its City Code online. Municipalities that do not publish their ordinances online still have easy means of complying with a request by court or counsel for a copy of an ordinance, and can send the same by fax or email in a reasonably brief time. See Getty Petroleum, 391 F.3d at 324 (If there is no doubt that a document accurately states the law, there is no reason to eschew judicial notice of that law. (footnote omitted)). {16} We hold that municipal ordinances are law and may be judicially noticed as such, and thus lay to rest the practice of treating municipal ordinances as facts. Municipal ordinances should be treated as law, and be placed into a case via the mechanism of judicial notice of law, not proof to the jury. Id. at 330. We agree with the Court of Appeals in Apodaca v. AAA Gas Co., 2003-NMCA-085, ¶ 46 n. 3, 134 N.M. 77, 73 P.3d 215, that there is no sound reason to deny an appellate court access to the law when it is reviewing a case de novo, and, as discussed above, conclude that there is no sound reason to deny our appellate courts the right to consult municipal ordinances, the laws that govern the myriad municipalities of New Mexico. Our rule of evidence governing judicial notice, therefore, is no longer applicable to the introduction of municipal ordinances into a case, as our holding means that municipal ordinances are no longer considered adjudicative facts. {17} This conclusion requires us to overrule certain cases to the extent that they hold a municipal ordinance must be pled and proven as any other fact, including Muller, 92 N.M. at 265, 587 P.2d at 43; Coe, 81 N.M. at 364, 467 P.2d at 30; and Gen. Servs. Corp., 75 N.M. at 552, 408 P.2d at 53. The factors we consider before overruling a prior decision are: 1) whether the precedent is so unworkable as to be intolerable; 2) whether parties justifiably relied on the precedent so that reversing it would create an undue hardship; 3) whether the principles of law have developed to such an extent as to leave the old rule no more than a remnant of abandoned doctrine; and 4) whether the facts have changed in the interval from the old rule to reconsideration so as to have robbed the old rule of justification. Padilla v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 2003-NMSC-011, ¶ 7, 133 N.M. 661, 68 P.3d 901 (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). In this instance, the first three factors are not determinant. However, the ease of legal research and the resources available to our courts, as well as to our litigants, have greatly increased, and thus [t]he rationale for requiring [municipal ordinances] to be offered into evidence and proven  the practical difficulty of obtaining the necessary materials  has been undermined by developments in technology and open government practices that often make it easier to find the relevant law. Getty Petroleum, 391 F.3d at 329. Our principle of stare decisis therefore is not offended by overruling the above-cited cases. {18} The important reasons why we require judicial notice on the record are not harmed by this change. Appellate review will be enhanced, not hindered, by treating municipal ordinances as laws which may be judicially noticed. In this case, the due process rights of Defendant are not implicated because Defendant had notice of the ordinance under which he was being tried, as this was a trial de novo. See United States v. Garcia, 672 F.2d 1349, 1356 n. 9 (11th Cir. 1982). Furthermore, the municipal ordinance under which Defendant was convicted is not in dispute. See Simes v. Simes, 95 Conn.App. 39, 895 A.2d 852, 861 (2006). For these reasons, Defendant is not prejudiced by this change in the City's burden to prosecute under municipal ordinances. {19} Although we are holding that the parties no longer must plead and prove a municipal ordinance as a fact, if counsel knows the particular ordinance at issue is difficult to obtain, or an old version of the ordinance is at issue, counsel should take reasonable steps to ensure the court has a copy of the correct law. See Novak v. Craven, 195 P.3d 1115, 1119 (Colo.Ct.App.2008) (noting that a trial court is not expected to be omniscient: the party must provide the trial court with at least some notice of the existence of the municipal provision). When the existence of a municipal ordinance is at issue, and therefore must be proven to the court, the methods of proof set forth in NMSA 1978, Section 3-17-5(D) (1965), remain the proper way to prove the ordinance. We find no evidence that the Legislature passed this statute with the intention of statutorily enacting the rule treating municipal ordinances as facts that must be pled and proven. {20} We affirm the decision of the Court of Appeals by applying the rule announced today, and Defendant's conviction for DWI contrary to the Aztec City Code is affirmed. This new rule applies to pending and future cases only. See State v. Frawley, 2007-NMSC-057, ¶ 41, 143 N.M. 7, 172 P.3d 144.