City of San Francisco v. Beideman

The bill in this case to enjoin a sale of real estate was held cot to be a bill to quiet title under the two hundred and forty-eighth section of the Practice Act, because plaintiff is not in possession ; nor a bill to remove or prevent cloud of title, because, under the averments, no cloud can be created within Pixley v. Huggins, 15 Cal. 127.

Nor can the bill be maintained upon the ground of preventing a multiplicity of suits. A single action of ejectment, in which all the tenants of defendant could be made parties, would determine the title ; and a notice of lis pendens filed would bind purchasers from the defendant.

Nor can the title be maintained on the ground of a trust; for, assuming that the municipal lands within the city of San Francisco were conveyed by the city to the Fund Commissioners, in trust for her creditors, and that this trust was a portion of a contract, or so connected with the obligation of a contract as that the property was unalterably fixed by that disposition of it, the city would still have the equity of redemption at least, and could dispose of the subject of the •trust, with the assent of the Legislature, subject only to the rights of the ' creditors or their trustees; or the Legislature, as the paramount political authority, could authorize or make such disposition. But the title thus disposed of would go to the grantee, who would hold the land, subject only to the trust. The city could not enjoin a sale of the property by the grantee, or interfere with his use or possession of it, until it became.necessary to enforce the trust.

This Court has not decided that a voluntary appropriation, by public act, of property or its proceeds, by a municipal body, when such appropriation is not associated With a contract as part of its obligation or sanction, remove's such property or proceeds from the control of the municipal body or the Legislature, or thaPthe terms of the act making the appropriation are unalterable.

Bond v. Supervisors of San Francisco, (10 Cal.) and other cases affirming the same principle, were put on the ground that the acts of appropriation were part of a contemporaneous contract, and hence within the constitutional prohibition as to impairing the obligation of contracts.

As a general rule, a provision, whether made by a State or a corporation, to meet its debts or engagements, may be regarded as only a means of executing its own policy or transacting its own business, and may be altered or repealed at pleasure. In other words, such an arrangement is not a contract, but a mere legislative regulation.

The decisions in this Court affirming the validity of the Act of 1858, giving effect to the Van Hess Ordinance, affirmed.

There is no limit as to the quantity of land to which parties in possession become entitled under the Van Hess Ordinance. All that a claimant of lands within the limits of the city of San Francisco need show, to entitle him to hold as against the city, is that he was in actual possession of such lands on the first day of January, 1855.