Under the uniform Evidence Acts, judicial notice of facts is governed by s 144.
Subsection 144(4) provides an apparently mandatory procedural mechanism which the judge must use.
See also Halsbury’s, Cross for distinction between adjudicative facts and legislative facts.
See Odgers for examples of where judicial notice has been taken of facts. These published examples appear to be extremely limited. For example, no case seems to have gone as far as taking notice of Ohm’s Law even though that is irrefutable ‘basic physics’. But not taking judicial notice of such a fact and instead insisting on expert evidence would be contrary to the very policy underpinning judicial notice (wasting Court time).
The practical implication is that expert evidence led should explain Ohm’s Law. However, the scope of the contest is not always foreseeable: the opponent may take surprise issue in closing submissions on a related point (thus not strictly contravening Browne v Dunn) the response to which may require articulation of Ohm’s Law. Thus resort to a submission regarding judicial notice may be necessary.