Ex Parte Young

97 P. 822, 154 Cal. 317, 1908 Cal. LEXIS 338
CourtCalifornia Supreme Court
DecidedOctober 6, 1908
DocketCrim. No. 1452.
StatusPublished
Cited by16 cases

This text of 97 P. 822 (Ex Parte Young) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering California Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Ex Parte Young, 97 P. 822, 154 Cal. 317, 1908 Cal. LEXIS 338 (Cal. 1908).

Opinion

*319 LORIGAN, J.

The petitioner was convicted of maintaining in the county of Orange, a saloon where intoxicating liquors were sold contrary to the provisions of ordinance 49 of that county entitled: “An ordinance prohibiting the business of selling . . . intoxicating liquors within the county of Orange,” etc., and sues out this writ under which he attacks the validity of said ordinance and the legality of his imprisonment upon conviction for a violation of it.

The validity of this same ordinance was heretofore presented for determination to the district court of appeals for the second appellate district at the instance of one George Yung convicted under it and who likewise questioned its validity upon habeas corpus proceedings. That court held the ordinance valid, and, as far as the objections which were there urged are concerned, we think correctly so. (Application of Yung on Habeas Corpus, 7 Cal. App. 772, [94 Pac. 594].)

The present petitioner makes the same points here against the validity of the ordinance as were urged there with some additional ones.

The principal claim made as to its validity is that it was passed and enacted under the provisions of section 13 of the County Government Act of 1897 (Stats. 1897, p. 454), which in the case of Ex parte Anderson, 134 Cal. 69, [86 Am. St. Rep. 236, 66 Pac. 194], was declared to be unconstitutional by this court. If this were true the ordinance, of course, would be invalid. But we are satisfied that upon the record before us it appears otherwise. The section of the County Government Act in question contemplated the framing of an ordinance by the people of the county to be submitted to the voters thereof for their adoption, and if a majority were in favor of it and upon a canvass of the vote by the board of supervisors it so appeared, that that fact was to be proclaimed by the board and the ordinance would then have the same force and effect as though adopted and ordained by the board of supervisors itself. This is the only action on the part of the board which the section required where the voters themselves selected and adopted the ordinance. The board was not required to pass or adopt it. It only proclaimed the fact that the electors had done so.

It appears, however, from the record before us that the board of supervisors not only proclaimed the fact of the adop *320 tion of the ordinance by the electors, but proceeded further and regularly passed and adopted the ordinance as an ordinance of the board of supervisors, and duly published it in the manner that the law required ordinances passed and adopted by the board to be published. Their action was of a dual effect; they proclaimed the ordinance as adopted by the electors and further passed and adopted it as an ordinance of the board itself.

It is true that, following the enacting clause of the ordinance, which is in the form prescribed by section 26 of the act as the enacting clause of ordinances passed and adopted by the board itself, there is the recital “as an ordinance of the county of Orange under and in accordance with the provisions of section 13 of an act entitled: “An act to establish a uniform system of county and township governments, approved April 1st, 1897, it is ordained as follows:” the various sections of the ordinance being set forth.

It is insisted that from the reference to the provisions of section 13 in the above recital accompanying the passage of the ordinance the board must be deemed to have passed it solely by reason of its adoption by the electors and in conformity therewith, notwithstanding that the formalities prescribed for the adoption of ordinances by the board itself were followed. "We cannot agree with this reasoning of petitioner. There can be no question but that the board of supervisors, independent of section 13 attempting to confer’ on the electors the power to adopt an ordinance of this character, had authority itself to pass such an ordinance and that the ordinance in question was passed and adopted in all respects so as to fully exercise that power. Under such circumstances it is of no moment that the board while exercising its unquestionable power, and in the prescribed way, misrecited the source from which such power was derived. It was not necessary to the validity of the ordinance that the board should have at all stated therein the source from which it derived its authority to enact it. There is no provision of law in this state requiring that this be done. It is sufficient that the power to do so exists, and the validity of an ordinance is not affected by the fact that the ordinance incorrectly states a source of power, as long as the power to enact is given. All the reference to section 13 of the act is in the title to the ordinance following *321 the enacting clause. There is no statute which requires ordinances of the board of supervisors to be entitled. (Ex parte Haskell, 112 Cal. 421, [44 Pac. 725].) So that, entitling the ordinance being unnecessary, the entitling portion with its reference to section 13 must be treated as mere surplusage. (See as discussing these propositions, with a citation of authorities in support of them, the Matter of Yung, 7 Cal. App. 772, [94 Pac. 594].)

In addition to the point made against the validity of the ordinance in the district court of appeals in the George Yung matter, it is claimed to be shown here, by certain affidavits accompanying the petition for the writ which were not presented on the Yung hearing, that as a fact the ordinance was not passed by the board of supervisors as a separate and independent proposition, but the action of the board was directed solely to the adoption of the ordinance as adopted by the electors under section 13 of the County Government Act.

These are affidavits of three out of five persons who were members of the board when the record of the proceedings of that body shows that the ordinance was passed, and in which they state that the only vote of the board was as to proclaiming the fact of the adoption of the ordinance by the voters, and that no separate or independent vote of the board was taken in adopting said ordinance as an ordinance of' the board itself. But the record of the proceedings of the board shows directly to the contrary: that the ordinance was passed and adopted by the affirmative vote of every member of the board. The attempt is by the affidavits to contradict that record; a record of a public body which is expressly required by the statute to be kept in writing and to show by parol evidence that its recitals are untrue. That may not, however, be done. This attack on the record, it is to be observed, is being made in a collateral proceeding and extrinsic evidence is not admissible in such a proceeding to control or contradict the record.

As said in 4 Dillon on Municipal Corporations, sec. 299, “Parol evidence in a collateral action cannot be received to contradict the record of a public corporation required by statute to be kept in writing or to show a mistake in matters as therein recorded.” (See, also, Mayhew v. District of Gay Head, 95 Mass. 129; City of Logansport v. Crockett, 64 Ind. 319; Weir v. State, 96 Ind. 311.)

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Bluebook (online)
97 P. 822, 154 Cal. 317, 1908 Cal. LEXIS 338, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/ex-parte-young-cal-1908.