LaFranchi v. City of Santa Rosa

65 P.2d 1301, 8 Cal. 2d 331, 110 A.L.R. 639, 1937 Cal. LEXIS 283
CourtCalifornia Supreme Court
DecidedFebruary 25, 1937
DocketSac. 4962
StatusPublished
Cited by29 cases

This text of 65 P.2d 1301 (LaFranchi v. City of Santa Rosa) 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
LaFranchi v. City of Santa Rosa, 65 P.2d 1301, 8 Cal. 2d 331, 110 A.L.R. 639, 1937 Cal. LEXIS 283 (Cal. 1937).

Opinion

THOMPSON, J.

This is an action for declaratory relief instituted for the purpose of testing the validity of Ordinance No. 473 of the City of Santa Rosa. The appeal is taken by the plaintiff from a judgment of dismissal entered upon an order sustaining a demurrer to the complaint without leave to amend. Ordinance No. 473 provides for the amendment of an existing ordinance by the addition of a new section, to be numbered G/^, reading: “It shall be unlawful for any person to sell, offer for sale, distribute or have in his possession for sale or distribution within the City of Santa Rosa, any milk intended for human consumption which has been pasteurized outside the corporate limits of the city.”

*333 It is alleged in the complaint that the plaintiff conducts a dairy ranch and dairy business about five miles outside the city limits and is engaged in the production, sale and distribution of raw and pasteurized milk; that both his pasteurized and raw milk plants are maintained and operated in compliance with all the requirements of the state department of agriculture, ordinances of Sonoma County and of the City of Santa Eosa, other than the questioned ordinance; that the City of Santa Eosa has a milk inspection service approved by the department of agriculture; that E. J. Helgren is the City Milk Inspector in charge of that inspection service and also the milk inspector for the city of Sebastopol; that, in his capacity of inspector for the City of Santa Eosa, Helgren inspects plaintiff’s raw milk plant and the milk produced thereat for sale in the City of Santa Eosa and pasteurizing plants located within the city limits of Santa Eosa; that, in his capacity of inspector for the City of Sebastopol, Helgren inspects the plaintiff’s pasteurizing plant and the pasteurized milk produced thereat; that the plaintiff’s pasteurizing plant is inspected by Helgren at the same periodic intervals and by the same scores and standards as the pasteurizing plants within the city limits and that the milk produced by plaintiff scores equally as high, both before and after pasteurization as the milk produced for, pasteurized and handled by the pasteurizing plants within the limits of the City of Santa Eosa; “that the City of Santa Eosa has, and since the year 1928 A. D. has had, a Milk Inspection Service approved by the Department of Agriculture of the State of California, in pursuance of statute in such case provided, and in pursuance of said Ordinance No. 444; that the plaintiff’s said dairy ranch and business are under the. jurisdiction of the said Milk Inspection Service of the City of Santa Eosa’’; that the City of Santa Eosa would incur no additional expense or inconvenience if its milk inspector inspected the plaintiff’s pasteurizing plant at the same time as he inspected his raw milk plant; that for the inspection of his raw milk plant the plaintiff pays a fee of one-half cent a gallon for milk sold in the City of Santa Eosa and that this fee and the fee paid by others selling milk in the city and that which will be derived from the sale of pasteurized milk within the city are ample to defray the cost of inspection of plain *334 tiff’s pasteurizing plant by Helgren, acting as City Milk Inspector for the City of Santa Rosa.

It is argued that the state has, in division IV of the Agricultural Code, enacted a general law covering the entire field of regulation and inspection of production, pasteurization, marketing, sale and distribution of milk and dairy products, with which the present ordinance conflicts by adding the additional requirement that pasteurized milk sold within the City of Santa Rosa must be pasteurized within the city limits. On behalf of the city it is insisted that municipalities are free to enact additional regulations which are not in conflict with but in furtherance and aid of the general law when such regulations are reasonable and are adopted in pursuance of the lawful exercise of the police power of the municipality.

To support the ordinance as a police regulation the respondents rely almost entirely upon Witt v. Klimm, 97 Cal. App. 131 [274 Pac. 1039], holding valid an ordinance of the city and county of San Francisco. The ordinance there involved provided that milk brought into the city from another inspection district if it were to be sold as pasteurized milk would have to be pasteurized in San Francisco, that other milk received at a central cooling plant outside of San Francisco would have to be inspected by an inspector paid by the owner of the business but appointed by the San Francisco board of .health. It will be observed that a very important difference exists between the two cases. In the Witt ease milk was being brought in from another inspection district, whereas in the present case it is alleged that the appellant’s business is located within the Santa Rosa district, approved, as required by the Agricultural Code, by the director of agriculture.

In this connection certain provisions of the Agricultural Code become important. Section 491 (Deering’s Supp. to Codes and Laws, 1935, p. 405) provides that cities or counties or groups of either may maintain a milk inspection service “conformable to the provisions” of the act “and the rules and regulations promulgated by the director” of agriculture and subject to his approval, and may by contract with a county or city maintain “such milk inspection service and laboratory within the limits” of another. Upon approval of *335 such milk inspection service it is provided that the milk shall be graded in accordance with the act.

In another section (490) it is provided that milk from the jurisdiction of one milk inspection service may be sold within the jurisdiction of another milk inspection service “if the consent of the” latter has been obtained. And by section 492 a person may, upon application to the director of agriculture secure the establishment of an approved milk inspection service where one does not exist if it appears necessary and advisable to the director upon agreement by the applicant to pay the expenses incident thereto. And to fuither indicate the tenor of the act, section 493 provides that any milk delivered by the producer to be sold as of a certain grade shall not be degraded or excluded from the market when the score of the dairy temporarily falls below the specified legal minimum.

Two things stand out in these provisions. The first is that the administration of the act and the supervision of the milk inspection services is in the hands of the director of agriculture. A health department of a city or county or any combination thereof must secure the approval of the director for the establishment of such a service which must be conducted in conformity with the act and rules and regulations promulgated by the director. He may order new services to be established and it is clearly within his power, by the exercise of his descretionary approval or disapproval, to fix the jurisdiction of the services. The second is that when milk has been inspected and graded within the jurisdiction of a service it can be sold therein, although not within the jurisdiction of another service without its consent. And in this regard it is important to note that nowhere in the act is any distinction made between raw and pasteurized milk.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
65 P.2d 1301, 8 Cal. 2d 331, 110 A.L.R. 639, 1937 Cal. LEXIS 283, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/lafranchi-v-city-of-santa-rosa-cal-1937.