Brill v. City of Los Angeles

PBESTON, J.

This appeal involves alone the question of the propriety under section 26a of the Street Opening Act of 1903 (Deering’s Gen. Laws, Act 8198, p. 3309), of an order directing a reassessment in a proceeding involving the opening, widening and extending of Flower Street from Washington Street to Exposition Boulevard, and the laying out of a new street in prolongation of said Flower Street from Exposition Boulevard, to the intersection of Thirty-eighth and Figueroa Streets in Los Angeles.

This section purports to contain its own measure of power. Power to reassess applies to a case where omission, irregularity, illegality, informality, or noncompliance with the requirements of the statutes is present. It does not exist where “the issuing of such (original) assessment was entirely without the power of the city to issue.” In other words, where due process of law is present when the first assessment is made, the reassessment is proper; where it is absent, the reassessment is improper. Said section 26a is closely akin to section 12[4] of the Vrooman Act (Stats. 1885, p. 147, Stats. 1913, p. 409), the provisions of which have been held valid and curative under circumstances similar to those of the case at bar

(Ferry

v.

O’Brien,

188 Cal. 629 [206 Pac. 449]). A somewhat analogous situation is found in the ease of

Wagoner

v.

LaGrande,

89 Or. 192 [173 Pac. 305]. See, also, to the same effect,

Tibbits Pacific Co.

v.

Firth,

53 Cal. App. 771 [200 Pac. 976], A type of this legislation is also found in section 28 of the Improvement Act of 1911 (Stats. 1923, p. 118), upon which a similar construction was placed in the case of