Santa Clara County v. Superior Court

203 P.2d 1, 33 Cal. 2d 552, 1949 Cal. LEXIS 215

• Court: California Supreme Court
• Decided: March 4, 1949
• Docket: S. F. 17861
• Status: Published

Opinions

SPENCE, J.

Petitioners seek a writ of prohibition to restrain the respondent court from proceeding further in connection with a “temporary restraining order and order to show cause” issued in an action commenced for the purpose of preventing the Board of Supervisors of Santa Clara County from certifying to the Legislature a proposed freeholders’ charter adopted by the voters of that county. Respondents filed a demurrer and answer to the petition, but the material facts, for the purpose of this discussion, are not in dispute and their brief recital will suffice to present the problem at hand. It appears that in pursuance of section 7% of article XI of the Constitution, the Board of Supervisors of Santa Clara County made publication of the proposed charter prepared by the duly elected freeholders; that thereafter at the general election on November 2, 1948, a majority of the voters approved said charter; and that in consequence of such favorable vote, the board of supervisors proposed forthwith to submit the charter to the Legislature at the current session “for its approval or rejection as a whole.” To prevent the taking of this final step in the prescribed proceedings, one Albert J. Levin, a taxpayer and voter in the county, filed an injunction action against petitioners in the respondent court. The complaint was premised upon the charge that the publication of the proposed charter was defective in the light of the constitutional requirements, and it therefore was not validly submitted to the voters at the general election for ratification. A “temporary restraining order and order to show cause” was thereupon issued. Petitioners demurred to the complaint in the respondent court, and then applied to this court for a writ of prohibition “commanding” respondents “to immediately cease and desist from any further proceedings” in the said injunction action “other than to dissolve [the] restraining order and ... to discharge [the] order to show cause.”

It is petitioners ’ position that the issuance of an injunction in the pending action in the respondent court would be “beyond the jurisdiction of respondents” as constituting an act of judicial interference with the legislative process. Petitioners further maintain that although the correctness of such injunction would be reviewable upon appeal, such remedy would not be adequate because of the time element here involved in that: (1) they are required to certify the proposed freeholders’ charter to the Legislature during the current session; (2) failure so to do “will render said proposed charter null and void and of no consequence whatever”; and (3) therefore “the submission of [said] charter to the legislature could be defeated by an adjournment sine die thereof pending the appeal”—considerations which leave “no doubt as to the propriety of this court’s assumption of original jurisdiction.” (Glide v. Superior Court of the County of Yolo, 147 Cal. 21, 27-29 [81 P. 225]; Reclamation District v. Superior Court of Sutter County, 171 Cal. 672, 683 [154 P. 845].) Careful analysis of the problem presented compels the conclusion that petitioners are entitled to the relief here sought.

Unquestionably, it must be recognized that our Com stitution (art. I, § 22) makes its provisions “mandatory and prohibitory, unless by express word's they are declared to be otherwise”; that this declaration applies to all sections..oí our Constitution alike, and every one subject to its mandate —county authorities as well as departments of the state government—must comply. So it was stated in Blanchard v. Hartwell, 131 Cal. 263, at pages 264-265 [63 P. 349], that the “procedure” for the adoption of a freeholders’ charter “was, under constitutional provisions, expressly declared to be mandatory and prohibitory, . . . that such mode is exclusive . . . one mode ... is commanded, and all other are prohibited. ’ ’ (See, also, People v. City of San Buenaventura, 213 Cal. 637, 640 [3 P.2d 3].) But in pursuing the prescribed procedure for preparation of the charter and submitting it to the voters for ratification as precedent steps to its certification to the Legislature for ‘ approval or rejection, ’ ’ the board of supervisors was acting as an arm or agent of the Legislature in accomplishing part of the legislative process. Accords ingly, as petitioners maintain, “judicial interference [therewith] by injunction” would “encroach” upon their “legislative, governmental and political functions” as county officers in undertaking to perform the duties imposed upon them by the Constitution for effectuating final action by the Legislature whereby the proposed charter would either be accepted and passed into a law or rejected, as it should see fit. (See Fragley v. Phelan, 126 Cal. 383, 403 [58 P. 923] [concurring opinion].) From this aspect of petitioners’ acts being in conformity with the mandate of the Constitution—the state organic law—the present case involves considerations similar to those where an injunction has been declared improper if it would operate to “prevent the execution of a public statute by officers of the law for the public benefit.” (Code Civ. Proc., § 526, subd. 4; Civ. Code, § 3423, subd. 4; People ex rel. Attorney General v. Board of Supervisors of Shasta County, 75 Cal. 179, 181 [16 P. 776]; Wright v. Jordan, 192 Cal. 704, 710 [221 P.915].)

In Taylor v. Cole, 201 Cal. 327 [257 P. 40], the nature of the proceedings for the adoption of “charters and amendments to charters” was fully discussed, and it was declared at page 334 that “the ratification and promulgation of . . . charter amendments had all the essence of a plain legislative enactment. ’ ’ Accordingly, the recital in the preamble of the Legislature’s concurrent resolution registering its approval was deemed conclusive on the question of “whether or not mandatory jurisdictional steps were followed in the election which indorsed and proposed [the] charter amendments.” (P. 333.) Such view coincides “with the central idea of the Constitution in prescribing the independence and equality of the three great departments of the state.” (P. 338.) In so recognizing the whole proceeding as within the domain of the legislative branch of our state government (Const., art. Ill, §1), the court pertinently continued at page 338: “. . . the constitution placed upon the legislature the plain duty of seeing that the proceedings by which the charter amendments were proposed were regular in all respects. If jurisdictional defects existed, it was the duty of the legislature to reject the documents tendered as a whole and withhold ratification. The legislature saw fit to accept the certificate of the defendant board and such other evidence as it may have taken and its conclusion that the election was regular is not open to question in court proceedings, at least in the absence of fraud.”

Such analysis of the scope of the legislative process was recognized in Taylor v. Cole, at page 334, to be directly “in conflict with the pronouncement ... in the early ease of People v. Gunn, 85 Cal. 238, 248 [24 P. 718]” where it was stated that “the municipal authorities and [the] people” rather than “the legislature” were the “law-makers” insofar as the adoption of a charter was concerned, and therefore the “regularity” of the proceedings was a “judicial question, the determination of which belonged to the judicial [not the legislative] department of the government.” It was the.theory of the Gunn case that the Legislature’s passage of a concurrent resolution in approval of a freeholders’ charter after adoption by vote of the people should be distinguished from its passage of a statute by bill, upon the premise that in the former case the Legislature was not exercising the law-making power in the same sense as in the latter when it enacts a statute upon a' subject entirely within its power, carrying with it “the presumption of regularity in what had gone before.’’ On that point of distinction — that a freeholders’ charter “approved’’ by the Legislature does not have the same dignity and force as a law it directly enacts—the Gunn case was expressly overruled in Taylor v. Cole as out of line with' settled legal principles resting upon the integrity of the legislative department "as a coordinate branch of our state government, entitled to function within its domain without interference by the courts. (Taylor v. Cole, supra, pages 334-338, and cases there cited; in accord, see Whitmore v. Brown, 207 Cal. 473, 481 [279 P. 447]; Allen v. City of Los Angeles, 210 Cal. 235, 239 [291 P. 393]; People v. City of San Buenaventura, supra, 213 Cal. 637, 640; Bruce v. Civil Service Board of City of Oakland, 6 Cal.App.2d 633, 636 [45 P.2d 419]; Yosemite Portland Cement Corp. v. State Board of Equalisation, 59 Cal. App.2d 39,42-43 [138 P.2d39].)

While the courts have jurisdiction under certain circumstances to determine whether mandatory steps leading to the adoption of a freeholders’ charter have been followed, the timeliness of such judicial inquiry is a significant factor. So in People v. City of San Buenaventura, supra, 213 Cal. 637, after the legislative process was at an end and the charter had gone into effect as a part of “the law of the State,’’ its validity was successfully attacked by quo warranto proceedings because an essential step as to its advertising prior to submission to the voters for adoption appeared, on the face of the Legislature’s “approving’’ resolution, not to have been taken. But that situation is distinguishable from this ease, where judicial relief through injunction is sought while the legislative process is still uncompleted and in interruption of the. procedure'.prescribed by the Constitution as within the law-making department of our state government. As the problem here 'thus narrows itself, it becomes a question of whether the respondent court has acted and is acting in excess of its jurisdiction in granting the temporary restraining order in prevention of petitioners’ performance of their duty to submit the' charter to the Legislature in culmination of the charter proceedings as undertaken by them.

It is true that the courts have interrupted the legislative process in pursuance of what would he a void measure in any event, where there has been a showing of these equitable considerations in justification of the judicial relief sought: (1) threatened or actual irreparable injury to the taxpayer or general public by the substantial waste of public funds in undertaking further prescribed steps; and (2) the absence of any other adequate remedy to prevent such waste or loss. Thus, in Harnett v. County of Sacramento, 195 Cal. 676 [235 P. 445], an injunction was properly granted to restrain the holding of a county initiative election where it appeared that such proposed procedure “would be a waste of the public money of the county . . . and an improper and illegal expenditure thereof” in that “even if the [measure] were adopted by the electors, it would be a nullity” as being contrary to state law and beyond the power of the county as a legislative body. (P. 679.) In considering “the point that an injunction cannot issue to restrain a legislative act,” the court pertinently stated at pages 682-683: “It is true that courts will not enjoin the passage of an act by the legislative body solely upon the ground that it will be a void enactment, nor as a general rule will they interfere with the holding of an election when the election is provided for by a valid law and the forms prescribed by that law have been complied with by the authorities. Nevertheless, there are exceptions to these rules. For example . . . [w]here it is proposed to hold an election for the submission of a measure to the popular vote, and that measure will be wholly void and inoperative even if adopted by the people, the courts may, at the instance of a resident taxpayer, enjoin the holding of the election upon the ground that it will be a useless expenditure and waste of public funds (Code Civ. Proc., sec. 526a.) There is no other adequate remedy for the protection of the rights of the taxpayers in such a situation and political rights are not curtailed. The present situation obviously merits the relief sought.” Upon the same principle an injunction was granted in Livermore v. Waite, 102 Cal. 113 [36 P. 424, 25 L.R.A. 312], to restrain the holding of a state election on a constitutional amendment passed by the Legislature and referred to the people but which, because of its defective terminology, would be “ineffective in accomplishing [the desired] change” even if approved by the people. (P. 122.)

Similarly, in Wallace v. Board of Supervisors of County of Alameda, 2 Cal.2d 109 [39 P.2d 423], a mandamus proceeding, the timeliness of the application for judicial relief with regard to contemplated charter procedure appears significantly. There, with the record showing that the county in question did not meet the conditions specified in the Constitution (art. XI, § 7%a) as prerequisite for organization therein of a consolidated city and county government, a writ of mandate was issued to “compel the respondent [board] to take no action with reference to calling an election of a board of freeholders” to pursue charter proceedings under the authority of the cited constitutional provision. (Emphasis added.)

But here no like conditions prevail in justification for judicial interference with the legislative process. The county’s expenditures with regard to the challenged charter proceedings—such as the special freeholders’ election, the publication of the charter, and whatever proportion of the overall expense of the general election procedure would be assignable to placing the additional measure on the ballot have all been made. The only step which now remains to be taken in completion of the legislative process is the petitioners’ certification of the charter to the Legislature for its “approval or rejection.” Manifestly, such final act not only necessitates no further expenditure of public funds—any more than would the passage by the Legislature of any one of its ordinary bills, whether valid or invalid—but in no sense does it involve any expenditure of the money of the county “taxpayer.” Thus, unless and until the Legislature approves the charter in question and an attempt is made to put it in effect, there can be no showing at all of the essential equitable considerations in support of the granting of injunctive relief—no threatened injury to the public or to any taxpayer which would derogate from the propriety of the completion of the legislative process, without interference, in the orderly manner prescribed by the Constitution as a matter within the domain of the legislative department of our state government. If the charter should be approved and so become a part of the state law, then the sufficiency of petitioners’ acts, in the light of the constitutional requirements as to the mandatory steps to be pursued, may be tested by some appropriate proceeding. (People v. City of San Buenaventura, supra, 213 Cal. 637, 642; cf. Johnston v. Board of Supervisors of Marin County, 31 Cal.2d 66, 71 [187 P.2d 686].)

From the foregoing observations it necessarily follows that “the temporary restraining order and order to show cause” should not have been issued, and there now remains the question o£ the availability of the relief here sought by petitioners. The writ of prohibition is an appropriate remedy to arrest the proceedings of a court “when such proceedings are without or in excess of the jurisdiction” of such court (Code Civ. Proc., §1102) and “where there is not a plain, speedy, and adequate remedy in the ordinary course of law” (Code Civ. Proc., § 1103). Here the respondent court had “jurisdiction over the subject matter and the parties in the fundamental sense” (Abelleira v. District Court of Appeal, 17 Cal.2d 280, 288 [109 P.2d 942,132 A.L.R. 715]), but its particular injunctive act in interference with the legislative process—contrary to the accepted doctrine of the separation of powers inherent in our tripartite form of government (Const., art. Ill, § 1)— was unauthorized and so “in excess of its jurisdiction.” (Evans v. Superior Court of City and County of San Francisco, 14 Cal.2d 563, 580 [96 P.2d 107]; see, also, Rodman v. Superior Court of Nevada County, 13 Cal.2d 262, 269-270 [89 P.2d 109]; Fortenbury v. Superior Court of Los Angeles County, 16 Cal.2d 405, 407-408 [106 P.2d 411]; Abelleira v. District Court of Appeal, supra, 17 Cal.2d 280, 287-290.) Moreover, as the exigencies of the time limitations governing the effectiveness of petitioners’ proposed submission of the charter to the Legislature at the current session were herein-above noted, the remedy by appeal, if the injunction were granted in the taxpayer’s suit, would not be adequate under the circumstances. The “restraining order” is of a continuing nature and the fact that it has already been issued does not nullify the propriety of petitioners ’ application for a writ of prohibition to prevent the respondent court from proceeding further in connection therewith. (Evans v. Superior Court of City and County of San Francisco, supra, 14 Cal.2d 563, 580-581.)

Let the peremptory writ issue as prayed.

Gibson, C. J., Shenk, J., Edmonds, J., and Traynor, J., concurred.