Texas appellate court holds that Wikipedia too unreliable for purposes of judicial notice.

In State v. Flores, an unpublished decision by the Texas Court of Appeals for the 14th District dated October 23, 2008, the court refused the appellant's request to take judicial notice of a Wikipedia entry describing the "John Reid interrogation technique."  The court reasoned in footnote 3 that Wikipedia entries are inherently unreliable because they can be written and edited anonymously by anyone.  The court relied on a recent article from the Wall Street Journal entitled Wikipedians Leave Cyberspace, Meet in Egypt, noting that the egalitarian nature of Wikipedia is both "its greatest strength and its greatest weakness."

The Flores decision is also available on Westlaw and Lexis at, respectively, 2008 WL 4683960 (Tex. App.-Hous. (14th Dist.)) and 2008 Tex. App. LEXIS 8010.

Hat tip to BNA Internet Law News.

I am the scholarship dude.

(jbl).