Stoetzner v. City of Los Angeles

California Court of Appeal May 18, 1959 No. Civ. 23419Published

Before: Nourse

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Holding. The court held that the administrative order for the demolition of a building found to be a public nuisance was supported by sufficient evidence and that the city's administrative procedures did not violate due process.

Issues

Whether the evidence supported the board's finding that the building was a nuisance requiring demolition.
Whether the city's administrative procedures for declaring a building a nuisance and ordering its demolition violated due process.

Disposition. affirmed

Quotations verified verbatim against the opinion

“The building is so wracked and deteriorated that it must be reconstructed to be made safe.”

“Appellants have not attempted to show that they were not accorded notice and a full and fair hearing. Their only complaint is as to the character of the tribunal provided for by the charter and the bias of the witnesses.”

NOURSE, J. pro tem.

Plaintiffs appeal from the judgment of the lower court denying their application for a peremptory writ of mandate directed to the defendant city of Los Angeles and the defendant Board of Building and Safety Commissioners of that city.

The plaintiffs are the owners of a three-story frame building erected in 1903. The first floor is devoted to commercial uses and the second and third floors are operated as a hotel. After inspection by the building department, fire department and health department of the city and upon the basis of the reports made by those departments the defendant board issued an order requiring the plaintiffs to show cause before it why the building should not be declared a dangerous building and as such a nuisance and ordered vacated and repaired or demolished.

After a prolonged hearing before an examiner appointed by the board pursuant to a city ordinance (Los Angeles City Ordinance No. 95338 as amended by Ordinance No. 108209) providing for such appointment, at which the testimony of numerous witnesses called by the board as well as witnesses called by the plaintiffs was heard, he made his report summar

[396]

izing the evidence and recommending the demolition of plaintiffs’ building. The board after reviewing the report of the examiner and the transcript of the evidence taken before him, made certain findings of fact, hereinafter alluded to, and upon the basis of those ordered plaintiffs’ building demolished.

The purported findings of the board as set forth in a resolution adopted by the board at the completion of the hearings before it, reads in part as follows-. “The Board of Building and Safety Commissioners has determined after full and fair consideration of the Building Inspector’s report; evidence received at the hearings held on January 10, March 7, April 11, May 3, June 6, June 12, July 10 and July 11, 1957; the transcript of said hearings; the Hearing Examiner’s report; and oral and written objections to the Hearing Examiner’s report presented by the interested parties that the certain building or structure located at 1019-21 East 7th Street and 669-671 Ceres Avenue, being more particularly described as Lot No. 3 of Tract No. 2145, is a dangerous building and a substandard residential building, a nuisance, and a building unfit for human habitation

Stoetzner v. City of Los Angeles

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