Court Opinion

ID: 9775933
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 19:13:13.759721+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:32:32.121440
License: Public Domain

POWERS, Justice,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent for the reasons given in my dissenting opinions in Commerce Independent School District v. Texas Education Agency, 859 S.W.2d 627, 629 (Tex.App.—Austin 1993, writ dism’d), and Nueces Canyon Consolidated Independent School District v. Central Education Agency, 900 S.W.2d 417 (Tex.App.—Austin 1995, no writ h.).
The Commissioner of Education and the Texas Education Agency filed the agency record with the clerk of the district court as required by section 2001.175(b) of the Administrative Procedure Act. Tex.Gov’t Code Ann. § 2001.175(b) (West Supp.1995). Ysleta Independent School District designated the agency record for inclusion in the transcript on appeal as expressly authorized by Rule 51(b) of the Texas Rules of Appellate Procedure. Tex.R.App.P. 51(b). Apparently, the clerk failed to include the agency record in the appellate'transcript. I would therefore set aside the submission on appeal and order that the clerk of the district court transmit the agency record to this Court for appellate review on re-submission without oral argument. See Tex.R.App.P. 51(d) (appellate court on its own motion may direct clerk of trial court to send appellate court any original paper for inspection); Tex.R.App.P. 55(c) (appellate court may set aside submission and make such orders as may be necessary to secure more satisfactory submission of ease).
I must also dissent regarding another part of the majority opinion — a purported distinction between the “published” and the “unpublished” final orders issued by an administrative agency in its adjudication of contested cases. The majority attribute this purported distinction to the supreme court opinion in Office of Public Utility Counsel v. Public Utility Commission, 878 S.W.2d 598, 600 (Tex.1994). There the supreme court determined that the judicial-notice doctrine applied to an administrative agency’s final order in a contested case, a matter not theretofore clearly established in Texas law. Id.; see generally 31 C.J.S. Evidence § 41, at 991-92 (1994). Noting that the Commission order in that case was “published at 17 Tex. P.U.C.Bull. 3063-3423,” the court remarked that the contents of the order were therefore “capable of accurate and ready determination by resort to a published record whose accuracy cannot reasonably be questioned.” This remark is, of course, a transparent reference to the second ground upon which a court may or must take judicial notice of a legislative fact that is “not subject to reasonable dispute” because “it is either (1) generally known within the territorial jurisdiction of the trial court or (2) capable of accurate and ready determination by resort to sources whose accuracy cannot reasonably be questioned.” Tex.R.Civ.Evid. 201(b).
The majority interpret the supreme court’s comments as limiting the application of the doctrine of judicial notice, insofar as final agency orders in contested cases are concerned, to those instances where an agency may reproduce all such orders and distribute them periodically to subscribers who have paid a fee for the service, as in the case of the Bulletin of the Public Utility Commission. I believe this confuses the applicability of the doctrine of judicial notice with the means by which a court obtains actual knowledge of the facts that it knows only “judicially,” that is to say, what the court “knows” as a legal abstraction.
Moreover, how may one logically distinguish between an agency order that is “published” and one that is not? The ordinary meaning of the word “publish” is to make the matter known to the public. See Black’s Law Dictionary 1233 (6th ed. 1990). All the final orders of administrative agencies must be written, copies must be furnished the *548public on request, and a statute expressly declares that all such orders are “public information.” See Tex.Gov’t Code Ann. § 552.022(12) (West 1994). Therefore, if any order of any agency is “published,” then all of them are, at least in the ordinary sense of the word. Did the supreme court intend some other, technical sense of the word “publish” as it was used in Office of Public Utility Counsel? The only apparent difference between the orders of the Public Utility Commission and those of other agencies is that the Commission periodically sends copies of all its orders, under the heading Bulletin, to subscribers who pay for the service. I do not believe this is a workable or meaningful distinction. It seems to me the supreme court did not have such a thing in mind. Rather, the court meant that the doctrine of judicial notice should operate as it ordinarily does: an appellate court may take judicial notice of an agency’s final order whenever the contents of the order are not subject to reasonable dispute and there is available to the court an accurate source setting forth what those contents are. Tex.R.Civ.Evid. 201(b)(2). The Bulletin was such a source, but I do not find in the opinion anything to suggest that a source is accurate only when it is sold and distributed to subscribers in the manner of the Bulletin. It seems to me that a certified or the agency’s agreed copy of the order, for example, would suffice equally as well for the working of the doctrine of judicial notice.
In the present cause, the Commissioner of Education and the Texas Education Agency filed in the trial court, as a supplement to the agency record, a copy of the agency’s final order. It is included in our appellate transcript. The trial court reached its judgment on the basis of the filed copy, affirming the order. It cannot be said that there is a reasonable dispute about the contents of the order; in truth no such dispute has arisen. I would take judicial notice of the contents of the filed copy.