Atlas Mixed Mortar Co. v. City of Burbank

RICHARDS, J.

This is an appeal from a judgment of the superior court of the county of Los Angeles directing a dismissal of this action after an order of the court sustaining the demurrer of the defendants to the plaintiff’s amended complaint. The action was instituted by the plaintiff for the purpose of obtaining an injunction restraining the respondent, City of Burbank, a municipal corporation, and also its co-defendants, its board of trustees and other officers of said City, from the enforcement of certain ordi

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nances enacted by said City through its said officials, regulating the use of commercial vehicles upon certain streets and highways within the corporate limits of said City, and to have said ordinances declared illegal and void. The facts out of which said action arose are briefly these: The plaintiff and appellant is a corporation which has for many years been engaged in the business of mixing and manufacturing mortar, plaster, cement, and kindred products, and of supplying its customers with such products, and also of furnishing to them sand, gravel, and crushed rock from its quarries. For these purposes plaintiff maintains a mixing and manufacturing plant in the City of Los Angeles, and it also owns and operates certain quarries upon a leasehold interest in certain lands located in Stough Canyon, which lies to the eastward and contiguous to the City of Burbank. The appellant’s quarries thus located are surrounded by steep hills, the only road leading to and from the same traversing said Stough Canyon and at the mouth thereof entering the limits of the City of Burbank on its northeasterly side. At the point of its said entry into the City of Burbank said roadway connects with and merges into a certain street or highway in said City officially named as Eleventh Street, but sometimes known as Sunset Canyon Drive, which street or drive leads into certain other streets within said City, including a street or avenue known as Cypress Avenue, which extends from Sunset Canyon Drive to the San Fernando road within said City. The plaintiff alleges that its only means of ingress to and egress from its said quarries, and its only means of travel therefrom whereby its trucks, drays, or other vehicles can convey the said, gravel, and crushed rock, the products of its said quarries, to its customers or to its mixing plant in the City of Los Angeles, is on and along the aforesaid streets, highways, and avenues of the City of Burbank in order to reach said San Fernando road. Plaintiff further alleges that commencing with August 21, 1923, and continuing at intervals thereafter down to April 7, 1925, the City of Burbank proceeded to enact a series of ordinances undertaking to regulate the weight and travel of commercial vehicles upon and along certain of its streets, and among these the streets or avenues above named, the effect of which ordinances, if valid, was to render unlawful the use and travel of com.