Erro v. City of Santa Barbara

NOURSE, P. J.

The plaintiffs seek by this action to have the proceedings of the city council of the City of Santa Barbara for the opening of an alleyway declared void and to restrain the defendants from taking further proceedings to that end. Plaintiffs had judgment and the defendants appeal upon typewritten transcripts.

The proceedings taken under the Street Opening Act were designed to declare public an existing private alley 20 feet in width and about 315 feet in length, commencing on the northeasterly line of Chapala Street in block 142 and running at right angles northeasterly to the end of lot 21. The complaint alleged; and the trial court found, that all the lands belonging to the plaintiffs and lying northerly and northeasterly of the proposed alley have a perpetual easement or right of way to the existing private alley and that all the other lands included in said assessment district and lying to the south of said alley did not have any right to the use of the existing alley. By a decree of partition in the estate of Orella the Superior Court in Santa Barbara County on October 10, 1914, adjudged the plaintiffs in this action to have an easement and the right to use a certain alley designated as ‘ Caesar alley” appurtenant to the lots therein distributed to the plaintiffs and their predecessor, which alley is found in the proceedings here under review to be a way of the uniform width of 20 feet commencing at Chapala Street and running northeasterly to the end of lot 21 and then north

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erly at the same uniform width to the southerly line of Figueroa Street. After the entry of this decree the owners of lot 12, which is south of said alley, and which is one of the lots included in said assessment district, commenced the construction of a building on said lot and commenced the use of said private alley as a means of ingress to and egress from the rear of the building erected on that lot. The plaintiffs in this proceeding thereupon commenced an action in equity against the owners of lot 12 and by decree of the superior court it was adjudged that these plaintiffs had the sole and exclusive right to the use of said alley and the defendants therein were perpetually restrained from using the same or setting up any claim thereto. It is alleged in the action now before us, and the trial court so found, that immediately following the entry of the latter decree the owners of lot 12, in conjunction with the owners of lots 5, 7 and 11, procured the institution of the proceedings before the city council for the formation of said assessment district and the opening of a portion of this alleyway to public use. (It should here be noted that the street opening proceedings contemplate the opening of that portion of the alleyway which adjoins the properties of the defendants and which are designated as lots 5, 7, and 11 and 12. It does not include that portion of the alley running from Figueroa Street southerly to the rear of lot 21.) When the proceedings were instituted before the city council all the plaintiffs herein, who are the owners of lots fronting on Figueroa Street and running back to the proposed public alley, and the plaintiffs, who are the owners of lots fronting on State Street and running back to that portion of the private alley which runs from Figueroa Street and to the rear of lot 21, joined in protest to the city council stating as grounds of their protest that they were the owners and had the sole right to use the entire alley running from Chapala Street through to Figueroa Street; that the proposed assessment district was confined to the properties of these plaintiffs 'and to the four lots south of the proposed alley heretofore mentioned; that the proposed assessment district was of no possible public benefit to the protestants, but that the proposed district was for the sole private benefit of the owners of lots 5, 7, 11 and 12. This protest was denied and the proceedings progressed to the filing of a com