Postal Telegraph Cable Co. v. County of Los Angeles

ANGELLOTTI, J.

This like the action of

Western Union Tel. Co.

v.

County of Los Angeles,

(L. A. No. 2446),

ante,

p. 124, [116 Pac. 564], is an action to recover taxes paid by plaintiff under protest for the fiscal year ending June 30,1907, upon an assessment upon its “right to occupy the streets of the city of Los Angeles,” the assessment valuation being thirty thousand dollars, and the tax thereon $330. Plaintiff had judgment and defendant appeals from such judgment.

There is no material difference between this case and the Western Union Telegraph Company case just referred to. This plaintiff, a telegraph company organized in the year 1886 under the laws of the state of New York, accepted the terms of the act of Congress of July 24, 1866, [14 Stats. 221], on April 16, 1886, and did. not construct its system in the city of Los Angeles until the year 1889, at which time that city had become organized under its freeholders’ charter approved by the state legislature January 31, 1889. (Stats. 1889, p. 455.) This difference, however, is not material. There was no express repeal of section 536 of the Civil Code until the year 1905, when that section was repealed and immediately re-enacted with express provision for telephone companies, and we have found no statute enacted prior to the construction of plaintiff’s system in the city of Los Angeles that can be held to have impliedly repealed or suspended the effect of that section so far as that city is concerned. Provisions of the general Municipal Corporation Act of 1883 relating to the powers of boards of trustees and city councils of towns and cities existing thereunder in regard to the control and regulation of streets therein, referred to by

amici curice,

cannot be given such effect. Howsoever they may be construed, they were never applicable to the city of Los Angeles, for that city was never organized under the general Municipal Corporation Act. Up to the time of the going into effect of its freeholders’ charter it existed under a special legislative charter, containing no

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