Court Opinion

ID: 9848097
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 04:12:40.171493+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:18:00.905324
License: Public Domain

McCORMICK, Justice
(dissenting).
I concur in division I, concur with the result in division II, and dissent from divisions III and IV and the result in the case.
I. My problem with division II is its failure to distinguish between “adjudicative” and “legislative” facts. The distinction originated with Professor Kenneth Davis. See Davis, An Approach to Problems of Evidence in the Administrative Process, 55 Harv.L.Rev. 364, 404-07 (1942). It has been recognized and discussed by commentators. See, e.g., C. McCormick, Handbook of the Law of Evidence § 328, at 759 (2d ed. 1972). It has been applied by this court. See, e.g., Richards v. City of Muscatine, 237 N.W.2d 48, 56 (Iowa 1975). The distinction is also reflected in Iowa Rule of Evidence 201 concerning judicial notice. The advisory committee note to the comparable Federal Rule of Evidence 201 explains the difference as follows:
Adjudicative facts are simply the facts of the particular case. Legislative facts, on the other hand, are those which have relevance to legal reasoning and the lawmaking process, whether in the formulation of a legal principle or ruling by a judge or court or in the enactment of a legislative body.
The key to the distinction is that adjudicative facts concern the immediate parties whereas legislative facts do not. See 3 K. Davis, Administrative Law Treatise § 15:5 (1980).
Legislative facts play a prominent role in constitutional and common law cases. See McCormick, supra, § 331. Formal requisites for judicial notice of legislative facts have not been devised:
Legislative facts, of course, have not fitted easily into any effort to propound a formalized set of rules applicable to judicial notice. These facts, after all, tend to be less than indisputable ones and hence beyond the pale of judicial notice according to a literal reading of the Uniform Rules of Evidence. What then of the requirement that, before judicial notice is taken, the parties be afforded a reasonable opportunity to present information relative to the propriety of taking judicial notice and the tenor of the matter to be noticed? By and large the parties have this opportunity during ar*817guments over motions as to the applicable law to be applied to the controversy, by exchanging briefs, and by employing the technique exemplified by the Bran-déis brief. It appears, therefore, that there exists no felt need to formalize the procedures pertaining to the opportunity to be heard with reference to legislative facts.
Id. § 333, at 772. Such a formulation may not be feasible:
Whatever the ultimate doctrinal synthesis of judicial notice of adjudicative facts comes to be, a viable formulation of rules laying down a similarly rigid etiquette with regard to legislative facts has not proved feasible. Given the current recognition that nonadjudicative facts are inextricably part and parcel of the law formulation process in a policy-oriented jurisprudence, there may be no need to formulate a distinctly judicial notice-captioned procedure with regard to nonadjudicative facts.
Id. § 334, at 774-75.
An extensive and helpful discussion of the role of legislative facts appears in 2 K. Davis, Administrative Law Treatise § 15.-03 (1958). Davis notes the practical difference between legislative and adjudicative facts:
The exceedingly practical difference between legislative and adjudicative facts is that, apart from facts properly noticed, the tribunal’s findings of adjudicative facts must be supported by evidence, but findings or assumptions of legislative facts are not, and sometimes cannot be supported by evidence.
Id. at 353.
I do not advocate a departure from principles of fundamental fairness in constitutional and common law adjudication. Parties should be permitted to express their views on matters of legislative fact before a court relies on them in fashioning its judgments. I do not believe either the court or parties, however, are confined to introducing evidence or complying with formal requisites for judicial notice. I doubt that the United States Supreme Court could have declared school segregation to be a denial of equal protection in Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 74 S.Ct. 686, 98 L.Ed. 873 (1954), if the parties and Court had been so limited. Nor do I believe this court could have recognized a warranty of habitability between landlord and tenant in Mease v. Fox, 200 N.W.2d 791 (Iowa 1972), if the court were confined in such a straitjacket. See McCormick, supra, § 331, at 768.
In the present case, however, neither adjudicative nor legislative facts support the district court’s declaration that the ordinance violates substantive due process. I therefore agree with the court’s conclusion in division II of the opinion.
II. Defendant failed even more obviously to establish the facial vagueness of the ordinance. His entire argument concerning the asserted unreasonableness of the ordinance is based on the alleged stringency of its requirements. Yet in his vagueness argument he contends a person of reasonable intelligence is unable to tell what the ordinance requires or prohibits. Neither he nor the court has shown that the provisions alleged to be vague are not susceptible to reasonable judicial construction.
The words held by the court to be vague all have dictionary definitions. They are identical or similar to words used in statutes imposing similar requirements. See, e.g., Iowa Code § 192.21(3) (1983) (“Effective means shall be provided to prevent the access of flies and rodents.”); § 657.2(2) (nuisance — “The causing or suffering of any offal, filth, or noisome substance to be collected or to remain in any place to the prejudice of others.”).
Defendant has made only a generalized facial attack on the requirements of the ordinance. I believe this attack is satisfactorily answered by noting the terminology of the ordinance is similar to that used in nuisance statutes. See §§ 657.1 and 657.2. Interpretations in nuisance cases will provide useful guidance in interpreting the ordinance. Section 657.2(1), for example, provides that “offensive smells” in certain *818circumstances are a nuisance. This court had no difficulty applying the offensive smell concept in Patz v. Farmegg Products, Inc., 196 N.W.2d 557 (Iowa 1972). The term “obnoxious odor” used in the present ordinance is capable of similar construction and application. See, e.g., State v. Lloyd A. Fry Roofing Co., 310 Minn. 535, 246 N.W.2d 692 (1976).
Defendant has failed to demonstrate that the provisions of the ordinance cannot be given a reasonable construction that will satisfy the due process standard.
III. Assuming the invalidity of the provisions striken by the court, I believe the court has misapplied the severability doctrine. The severability question is one of legislative intent. Motor Club of Iowa v. Department of Transportation, 251 N.W.2d 510, 519 (Iowa 1977). When, as here, the enactment contains a severability clause “the presumption is inescapable that this was the legislative intent.” State v. Books, 225 N.W.2d 322, 325 (Iowa 1975).
This is a textbook case for application of the severability doctrine. A licensing ordinance is involved. Defendant is charged for failing to have a permit, not for having violated one of the sanitation provisions. Those provisions are not interdependent; they are distinct and cumulative. Removal of one has no necessary effect on another, and removal of all of them has no necessary effect on the permit requirement.
The City stated its intention that the permit requirement be retained even if particular sanitation provisions should be striken. As the rule requires, I would give effect to this intention.
I would reverse the trial court but, because defendant has been acquitted, would not remand.