James v. Police Court (1919) · DecisionDepot

James v. Police Court

Name: California Superior Court Tentative Rulings
Creator: DecisionDepot
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

California Court of Appeal Jan 7, 1919 No. Civ. No. 2206.Published

Before: Waste

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Holding. The court held that the petitioner lacked the requisite beneficial interest to maintain the action and that the superior court acted in excess of its jurisdiction by proceeding without a proper transcript of the record from the inferior tribunal.

Issues

Whether the petitioner was a 'party beneficially interested' under the Code of Civil Procedure to maintain a writ of review.
Whether the superior court erred in proceeding to judgment without a proper transcript of the record from the police court.

Disposition. reversed

Quotations verified verbatim against the opinion

“Personally he was in no way beneficially interested.”

“It thus appears that the superior court, in rendering the judgment, had no record of the inferior tribunal before it, other than the exhibits incorporated in the petition for the writ.”

“Inasmuch as the petitioner was not beneficially interested to the degree required by the statute, to enable him to maintain the proceeding, and as the court below acted in excess of its jurisdiction in proceeding with no record before it, the judgment is reversed.”

Synopsis

APPEAL from a judgment of the Superior Court of the City and County of San Francisco. George H. Cabaniss, Judge. Reversed.

The facts are stated in the opinion of the court.

WASTE, P. J.

This is an appeal from the judgment in a special proceeding for a writ of review. The lower court held that the defendant acted in excess of jurisdiction in issuing a search-warrant, refused to quash the writ, and directed the return to plaintiff of the property seized.

Plaintiff and respondent was president of the Broadway United States Bonded Warehouse, in San Francisco, and manager thereof for the Danforth Warehouse Company, a corporation, the owner. There were in storage in this warehouse three cases of opium, in the original .packages, the tins containing the opium, having been stamped, replaced in the cases, and sealed by United States customs officers. This opium, so far as the record discloses, was owned by Look Tin Eli, who had purchased it from the original consignee, and who paid the duty on the same.

On the 9th of April, 1912, defendant Oppenheim, as police judge of the city and county of San Francisco, issued a search-warrant under which F. A. Sutherland, a deputy sheriff, and a detail of police officers took and removed said opium from the warehouse and deposited it with the property clerk of the police department. Plaintiff James moved the police court for an order for the restoration to himself of the property so seized, which motion was denied. Thereupon he brought the action for a writ of review.

One point made by appellant is that James was not a “party beneficially interested” within the purview of section 3069 of the Code of Civil Procedure. “The requirement that the application must be made by ‘the party beneficially interested' has been construed to mean ‘that in an application made by a private party his interest must be of a nature which is distinguishable from that of the mass of the community.’ ”

(Ashe

Board of Supervisors,

71 Cal. 238, [16 Pac. 783].) We are not willing to hold that James in an individual capacity comes within even the broad scope of the cases cited. Personally he was in no way beneficially interested.

The writ was directed to the defendant Oppenheim, judge of the police court, requiring him to certify a transcript of the record in the search-warrant proceedings. No such return

[364]

James v. Police Court

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Synopsis

WASTE, P. J.

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