Potter v. City Council

California Court of Appeal Feb 5, 1951 No. Civ. 18218Published

Before: Doran

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Holding. The court held that the petitioners failed to demonstrate a sufficient beneficial interest or a clear legal right to challenge the proposed municipal annexation ordinance through a writ of mandate. Consequently, the court declined to interfere with the legislative process of the city council.

Issues

Whether private citizens and taxpayers have a sufficient beneficial interest to maintain a mandate proceeding to challenge a proposed municipal annexation ordinance.
Whether the court should issue a writ of mandate to prevent a city council from adopting a legislative act of annexation.

Disposition. dismissed

Quotations verified verbatim against the opinion

“It is a settled general rule that a private individual may apply for this remedy only in those cases where he has some private or particular interest to be subserved, or some particular right to be preserved or protected by the writ”

“It is fundamental that where the existence of the right is doubtful, the writ will be denied.”

“The alternative writ of mandate is discharged, the proceeding dismissed and the peremptory writ prayed for is denied.”

[142]

DORAN, J.

The petition herein sets forth that the respondent city of Port Hueneme in Ventura County, “is adjacent and west of the city of Oxnard, and adjoins the military reservation and installations of the United States Navy and . . . Coast Guard on its north and west boundaries”; that the Coast Guard has owned and operated said reservation of 43 acres for over 50 years, “at which time exclusive federal jurisdiction was ceded by the State of California to said area”; that prior to 1943, the United States Navy acquired 1,577 acres of land in said area, and developed various naval installations known as Port Hueneme, to which parcel California likewise ceded “exclusive territorial jurisdiction.”

It is further stated that previous to November, 1939, some 250 acres of said 1,577 acre parcel were then a part of the city of Oxnard, and that on September 26, 1939, a petition was signed by 77 citizens of the Port Hueneme area, including respondents Bert N. Dahl, mayor, and Oran W. Brown, past mayor and present member of the Port Hueneme city council, and filed with the city of Oxnard, representing that “if said harbor area were excluded from the City of Oxnard for the purpose of including the said harbor area within the Oxnard Harbor District, that the ... 77 signers would oppose any attempt by any municipality to annex said harbor area for twenty-five (25) years thereafter”; that “acting upon said solemn written pledged word . . . the City of Oxnard did exclude said harbor area from the City of Oxnard, ’ ’ and that the United States “in reliance upon said status, accepted exclusive jurisdiction over said lands,” and expended in excess of $38,000,000 in developing such harbor.

Petitioners further allege that on March 30, 1949, the respondent Port Hueneme city council ‘ commenced formal consideration of a proposed ordinance to annex the said naval reservation and . . . coast guard reservation into the newly incorporated City of Port Hueneme, pursuant to Section 6, Act 5162, Deering’s General Laws of the State of California, on the assertion that said reservations were uninhabited areas,” which ordinance was protested by the Navy, Coast Guard, and others. The original ordinance was then abandoned, and a resolution adopted declaring an intention to annex said reservations “together with a sixty (60) foot strip of territory owned by the Berylwood Investment Company, consisting of 7.32 acres, adjacent to the western boundary of said naval reservation.” It is alleged that said 60-foot strip was included “as a subterfuge for the purpose of avoiding the

Potter v. City Council

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DORAN, J.

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