Krenwinkle v. City of Los Angeles

WASTE, C. J.

Plaintiff, a taxpayer, brings this action to compel cancellation of two lease agreements pertaining to land used as a municipal airport, and to compel the City of Los Angeles to discontinue and abandon the operation of the airport established and being maintained on the demised premises. Four demurrers to the amended complaint were sustained without leave to amend. Plaintiff appeals from the judgment of dismissal entered on the motion of defendants, following the order sustaining the demurrers.

The cause of action is based upon the contentions, as alleged in the amended complaint, that the leases are void because, first, the aggregate of the total amount of rental instalments to be paid by the city exceeds the income and revenue provided by the city for the necessary and requisite expenditures of the city for the year, and therefore works a violation of article XI, section 18, of the state Constitution, which provides that a municipal debt incurred in any year shall not exceed .the income and revenue provided-for such year without the assent of the voters of the city, given at an election-held for the purpose, nor unless other provisions of the Constitution have been complied with.

A second contention is that the charter of the City of Los Angeles prohibits the city from engaging in any “purely commercial or industrial enterprise” without the approval of the voters of the city manifested at an election. The conduct of a municipal airport, it is contended, falls within the inhibition. No phase of the question of the lease or maintenance of the airport was submitted to the voters of the city for ratification at an election.

In addition to answering the two principal contentions just noted, the respondents advance a number of technical objections to the sufficiency of the amended complaint, raised by special demurrers, but we deem discussion of them unnecessary, for we are of the view that the demurrers were properly sustained on the general ground of failure of the plaintiff to

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state a cause of action. We therefore confine our discussion to the two main contentions advanced by the appellant.

It is well-settled law in this state that the execution of a