Define: judicial notice

Judicial notice is a method of introducing non-disputed facts into the record.

When a court takes judicial notice of a certain fact, it obviates the need for parties to prove the fact in court. ...
all legislatures have approved court rules that allow a court to recognize facts that constitute common knowledge without requiring proof from the parties.

On the federal trial court level, judicial notice is recognized in rule 201 of the Federal Rules of Evidence for U.S. District Courts and Magistrates. Rule 201 provides, in part, that "[a] judicially noticed fact must be one not subject to reasonable dispute in that 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."

Under rule 201 a trial court must take judicial notice of a well-known fact at the request of one of the parties, if the court is provided with information supporting the fact. A court also has the option to take judicial notice at its discretion, without a request from a party.

Rule 201 further provides that a court may take judicial notice at any time during a proceeding. If a party objects to the taking of judicial notice, the court must give that party an opportunity to be heard on the issue. In a civil jury trial, the court must inform the jury that it must accept the judicially noticed facts in the case as conclusively proved. In a criminal trial by jury, the court must instruct the jury "that it may, but is not required to, accept as conclusive any fact judicially noticed." All states have statutes that are virtually identical to rule 201.

Define: declaratory relief

Declaratory relief is a judge's determination (called a "declaratory judgment") of the parties' rights under a contract or a statute, often requested (and highly desired) in a lawsuit over a contract. ... resolution of legal rights will resolve some or all of the other issues in the matter.


Declaratory relief refers to a judgment of a court which determines the rights of parties without ordering anything be done or awarding damages. By seeking a declaratory judgment, the party making the request is seeking for an official declaration of the status of a matter in controversy.


... empower the court, in the event of an "actual controversy" to "declare" the parties' rights and obligations before the dispute had otherwise ripened into a full-blown action for, perhaps among other things, breach of contract. The rights and obligations of "any interested person" may, according to the statute be declared "under a deed, will or other written instrument, or under a contract", or "in respect to, in, over or upon property" and certain other specific, property-related matters.
Declaratory Relief is "cumulative"; it is available, in the same lawsuit, with other forms of relief.
... Declaratory Relief operates only prospectively; that is, it declares the parties' rights and obligations in the future. The remedy is not available at all where no future relations were contemplated by the parties but, instead, all that confronted them was a completed act of alleged wrongdoing.

Define: demurrer

demurrer is a formal objection to the legal sufficiency of an opponent's pleading. It asks for a judgment in the demurring party's favor due to a failure to state a cause of action.

Define: writ of mandate

A petition for writ of mandate, also commonly known as a petition for a writ of mandamus, is a document filed with a court that requests an order directing a governmental agency or representative to perform a required function. In the alternative, a petition for writ of mandate can be filed seeking a court to order a governmental agency or representative to stop doing something that it has no legal authority to do in the first instance.

Define: appurtenant

appurtenant adj. pertaining to something that attaches. In real property law this describes any right or restriction which goes with that property, such as an easement to gain access across the neighbor's parcel, or a covenant (agreement) against blocking the neighbor's view.

Define: stare decisis

Stare decisis is the policy of following rules or principles laid down in previous judicial decisions ...

To abide or adhere to decided cases. It is a general maxim that when a point has been settled by decision, it forms a precedent which is not afterwards to be departed from.

Define: tacking

In real estate law, tacking is the combination of possession periods by different adverse possessors.