Cuthbert v. Woodman

SLOANE, J.

The city of Los Angeles has appealed from a judgment of the superior court of the county of Los Angeles enjoining the mayor, chief of police, and members of the council of said city from enforcing section 54, and the penalties pertaining thereto, of an ordinance of the city providing for licensing and regulating certain trades, professions, and occupations.

The section in question imposes a license tax as follows: “Sec. 54. For every person, firm or corporation conducting, managing or carrying on the business of collecting debts, claims or demands and known as a collection agency, $100 per year, payable quarterly.”

The judgment of the court is based upon a finding that this section of the ordinance is “unjust, unreasonable, unconstitutional, discriminating, and void,” for the reason that it singles out for the imposition of the tax those “known as a collection agency” without stating by whom they shall be so known, and that it attempts to distinguish between persons known as a collection agency and those in the same line of business who are not known as a collection agency; and that said ordinance fixes a license tax for engaging in such business, of one hundred dollars per annum payable quarterly, without specifying what proportion of said one hundred dollars per annum shall be payable each quarter.

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In order not to reflect too severely upon the perspicuity of Los Angeles business men, it may be conceded that the section complained of is not as free from ambiguity in its literal and grammatical construction as it might be, but in behalf of the legal acumen of Los Angeles lawmakers, we are constrained to hold that the natural and obvious meaning of the provision is not so obscure as to render it unjust, discriminating, unconstitutional, or void.

The matter at issue here is not the construction of a penal indictment or information, but the interpretation of a statute, and the law in such a case indulges every presumption in favor of the validity of the enactment.

A municipal ordinance must be very clearly obnoxious to such objections as those made, or some one of them, before it will be declared invalid by the courts.

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