Glendale Unified School District v. Vista Del Rossmoyne Co.

232 Cal. App. 2d 493, 42 Cal. Rptr. 899, 1965 Cal. App. LEXIS 1489
CourtCalifornia Court of Appeal
DecidedFebruary 24, 1965
DocketCiv. 27278
StatusPublished
Cited by13 cases

This text of 232 Cal. App. 2d 493 (Glendale Unified School District v. Vista Del Rossmoyne Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering California Court of Appeal primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Glendale Unified School District v. Vista Del Rossmoyne Co., 232 Cal. App. 2d 493, 42 Cal. Rptr. 899, 1965 Cal. App. LEXIS 1489 (Cal. Ct. App. 1965).

Opinion

HERNDON, J.

Defendants appeal from the judgment in condemnation entered following the verdict of the jury which awarded them $350,000 for the taking by plaintiff of approximately 69.2 acres of land.

Appellants make three assignments of error as the basis for urging a reversal of the instant judgment. They contend (1) that the date of valuation should have been the date of trial rather than the date the summons issued; (2) that the zoning ordinances of the City of Glendale which had placed their property into an R-l zone are invalid; and (3) that the jury erroneously disregarded appellants’ evidence as to the valuation of some unspecified portion of their property which the jury, by special verdict, had held to be subject to a reason *495 able probability of zone variance. We have considered each of these contentions and find them to be clearly untenable.

A brief statement will suffice to indicate the basis upon which appellants predicate their first contention. Appellants initially were represented herein by the law firm of Hansen & Dolle and Attorney Harold B. Cooper. The summons in this case had issued on April 14, 1961, and therefore such date would have been the date of valuation unless the case were not tried within one year. In that event, the valuation date would be the date of the trial “unless the delay [was] caused by the defendant[s].” (Code Civ. Proc., § 1249.) Following several continuances, the matter came on for trial on March 2, 1962. On that date Mr. Hansen, speaking for the firm of Hansen & Dolle, stated to the court that he had been insulted by his clients and requested to be relieved. This request was granted and the trial of the case was continued to May 31, 1962. Trial was commenced on June 6, 1962, with the appellants being then represented by their former attorney, Harold B. Cooper, and the firm of Demetriou & Del Guereio. In the trial that followed, appellants, their counsel and their witnesses all designated and accepted April 14, 1961, as the correct valuation date and requested an instruction by the court so specifying.

Following the entry of judgment, a notice of appeal was filed on October 9, 1962, by appellants’ present counsel, Freda B. Walbrecht. Thereafter, on July 9, 1963, a year after completion of the trial herein, appellants’ present counsel filed a notice of motion seeking to correct the minute order which was made and entered upon the hearing of March 2, 1962, above mentioned so that said order would indicate that the continuance thereby granted had not been “on the motion of defendant” as previously indicated. Following a hearing held thereon, the court purported to correct its minute order to read as follows: “a) The date of valuation to remain the same to wit, the date of the issuance of Summons on April 14, 1961. b) On Court’s own motion cause ordered continued to May 31, 1962 at 9 :00 a.m. . . . d) That- said continuance was not found due to the fault of the defendants and the defendants were not charged with delaying the action as is referred to in Section 1249 of the [Code of Civil Procedure]. ...”

As the result of this “correction,” appellants now assert that they should be entitled to a retrial of the action with June 6, 1962, designated as the valuation date. This conten *496 tion is so patently unreasonable that we need not even consider the subsidiary issues which underlie it, i.e., (1) whether such a “correction” was an appropriate nunc pro tunc order; and (2) whether the trial court’s later statement that by its earlier order “said continuance was not found due to the fault of defendants and the defendants were not charged with delaying the action as is referred to in Section 1249,” would prevent us from holding, despite the lack of such a “finding” or “charge” on the part of the trial court, that the continuance granted herein should be deemed “caused by” appellants. (Cf. People v. Murata, 55 Cal.2d 1, 8-9 [9 Cal.Rptr. 601, 357 P.2d 833].)

We may accept as conceded the fact that if appellants’ trial counsel, one of whom had been their attorney of record throughout the entire proceeding, had sought at the time of trial to establish a later valuation date, his position would have been properly sustained. Appellants presumably knew, and their trial counsel certainly should have known, every element necessary to require designation of the later date. They will not now be heard to speculate through counsel newly retained to prosecute their appeal that perhaps their trial counsel was misled by the court’s original minute order and for that reason tried the case, laboring under an erroneous conception. (Cf. City of Los Angeles v. Tower, 90 Cal.App.2d 869 [204 P.2d 395], wherein the condemnees objected to the use of the trial date, rather than an earlier date, as the valuation date upon the claim that their property had decreased in value in the interim.)

“ It is a general rule of appellate review, early established and long adhered to, that questions not raised in the trial court will not be considered on appeal. This doctrine has been extended to provide that one may not raise a question on appeal where he has assented to or recognized the validity of the matter or proceeding in the court below, unless fundamental error is involved. The rule is founded upon considerations of practical necessity in the orderly administration of the law and of fairness to the court and the opposite party, and upon the principles underlying the doctrines of waiver and estoppel.” (3 Cal.Jur.2d, Appeal and Error, § 140, p. 604.) “As a corollary to the rule that questions not raised in the trial court will not be considered on appeal, a party cannot, after trying a ease on a well-defined theory accepted by all the parties and the court, raise for the *497 first time in the appellate court the question of the correctness of that theory.” (3 CaI.Jur.2d, Appeal and Error, § 142, p. 607.)

Our conclusion that these well-established rules should be followed in the instant ease is further strengthened by the fact that appellants’ only showing of prejudice is based upon allegations which go outside the record and relate to events which occurred after the date of the trial itself. Since these matters would have been unavailable to appellant at the time of trial, regardless of the proper valuation date, they wholly fail to establish that appellants were prejudiced herein.

The lack of merit in appellants’ second contention is even more apparent. On January 12, 1922, the city council adopted an ordinance which provided that the city would be divided into certain industrial and commercial districts and that all territory not lying within these districts was “declared to comprise the Residential District of said city. ’ ’ This ordinance further provided;

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232 Cal. App. 2d 493, 42 Cal. Rptr. 899, 1965 Cal. App. LEXIS 1489, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/glendale-unified-school-district-v-vista-del-rossmoyne-co-calctapp-1965.