Gaetano Bocci & Sons Co. v. Town of Lawndale

THE COURT.

This appeal is by the plaintiffs from a judgment decreeing that a certain ordinance of the Town of Lawndale, California, is valid and constitutional and that plaintiff is not entitled to an injunction restraining the defendants or either of them from enforcing the same. It is appellants’ contention that the ordinance involved is unconstitutional.

The ordinance in question provides that “it shall be unlawful for any person, firm, corporation or association to open for business or keep open within the corporate limits of the Town of Lawndale, upon or on any Sunday, any store, workshop, banking house or other place of business or

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any public dance hall, pool or billiard parlor, skating rink, theatre or stone cutting works or monument yard.” It is further enacted that the foregoing provisions “shall not apply or be construed to apply to persons, firms, corporations or associations who on Sunday open for business or keep open

bona fide

hotels, boarding houses, lodging houses, restaurants or lunch rooms, bakeries, drug stores, confectionery stores, ice cream parlors, garages, cemeteries and cemetery offices, crematories, florist stands or stores, transfer, railroad, telephone, telegraph or express offices, vegetable gardens, stables, newspaper or periodical agencies for the legitimate business o£ each.” A penalty is provided for the violation of the ordinance.

The plaintiffs and appellants are the owners and managers of a stone-cutting works or monument yard in Lawndale. They contend that the classifications made in the ordinance are arbitrary and unreasonable; that they are unjustly discriminated against and that the ordinance is not a valid exercise of the police power.

Respondents, on the contrary, urge that appellants’ objections are answered by the case of

In re Sumida,

177 Cal. 388 [170 Pac. 823], and state that the ordinance involved here was modeled after the ordinance approved in the Sumida case,

supra.