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Counts v. Bryan7/13/2005
-00620-COA-R3CV, 2005 WL 1277850, *6 (Tenn. Ct. App. Feb. 14, 2005). However, Tenn. R. Evid. 201(b)(2) generally should not be applied to take judicial notice of a witness' opinion or of long narratives by a witness of his or her general observations or perceptions of events. Adjudicative facts contemplated in Tenn. R. Evid. 201 are typically those facts Detective Joe Friday, a character of the popular 1950's television series Dragnet, desired to elicit from a witness. His classic line - to encourage a witness who was being too verbose - was, "Just the facts, ma'am."
As Tenn. R. Evid. 201(b)(2) provides, the adjudicative fact must be one that is "not subject to reasonable dispute" and it must be "capable of accurate and ready determination by resort to sources whose accuracy cannot reasonably be questioned." Here, Defendants moved to dismiss, arguing the second action violated the one-year statute of limitation for personal injury actions. The facts necessary to answer that question are: (1) the date the cause of action accrued - the date of the accident, (2) the date the first action was commenced, (3) the date of the voluntary dismissal, and (4) the date the second action was commenced. The complaint in the second action provided two of the four dates, the date of the accident and the date the second action was commenced, which was stamped on the face of the second complaint. The two missing facts - the date the first action was commenced and the date of the voluntary dismissal - were in the trial court's records.
The two missing dates were capable of accurate and ready determination by referencing the court's files. Moreover, the accuracy of the dates cannot reasonably be questioned because the dates were imprinted by the Circuit Court Clerk of Maury County on the documents as they were filed in that action. Tenn. R. Evid. 201(b) authorizes the trial court to take judicial notice of a fact that is not subject to reasonable dispute if it is capable of accurate and ready determination by resort to sources whose accuracy cannot reasonably be questioned. Therefore, the trial court's decision to take judicial notice of the two missing dates was an appropriate exercise of its discretion, as authorized by Tenn. R. Evid. 201.
The judgment of the trial court is affirmed and this matter is remanded with costs of appeal assessed against Defendants, Jennifer Lynn Bryan, Jerry Bryan and Geri Bryan.
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