Court Opinion

ID: 9660819
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 22:21:30.912846+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:22.462374
License: Public Domain

Felts, Justice
(concurring).
I concur in all that is said in the opinion of the Court written by Justice Swepston but desire to add a word more.
While I agree that in considering the bill on demurrer, we should take judicial notice of the report of the Community Service Commission, for the reasons set out in the opinion, my difficulty arose from the impact of these two rules: (1) the fundamental rule that on demurrer the bill’s averments of fact are to be taken as true; and (2) the rule, as stated by Thayer1 and Wigmore,2 that matter judicially noticed is disputable and may be shown by evidence to be untrue.
Manifestly, the effect of taking the bill’s averments as true would be to make an issue upon many matters judicially noticed in the report, if such matters be disputable. This would necessarily call for an answer and proof on such issues.
But there is no such difficulty, if the matters judicially *304noticed in said report are indisputable, not open to be averred against even by tbe allegations of tbe bill. I tbink tbe very definition of a matter judicially noticed means that it is to be taken as true and is indisputable. This is very clearly shown by tbe able and helpful article, “Judicial Notice,” 57 Harv.L.Rev., January 1944, 269-294, by Professor Edmund M. Morgan; see also tbe cases collated in tbe annotation in 45 A.L.R.2d 1069, 1070-1072.
For this additional reason, I agree with tbe Court’s opinion.

. Thayer, A Preliminary Treatise on Evidence at the Common Law 308 (1898).

. 9 Wigmore on Evidence (3rd ed., 1940, c. 2567(8)).