County of San Diego v. County of Riverside

BEATTY, C. J. This action was commenced in the county of Los Angeles to recover certain moneys claimed to have been received by the defendant to the use of plaintiff. Defendant demurred to the complaint upon the grounds of absence of jurisdiction and want of facts. The superior court overruled the demurrer, and, defendant declining to answer, entered judgment for the plaintiff, from which this appeal is prosecuted.

If the facts alleged in the complaint constitute a cause of action, there appears to be-no ground upon which the jurisdiction of the court can he successfully assailed.

It appears from the complaint, among other things, that the county of Riverside was created by an act of the legislature, approved March 13, 1893 (Stats. 1893, p. 158), out of territory formerly belonging, part to the county of San Diego and part to the county of San Bernardino, and that commissioners were appointed in pursuance of the provisions of said act to settle and adjust the mutual claims and obligations of the counties of Riverside and San Diego, with respect to the property and existing indebtedness of the latter county; that said commissioners duly organized and afterward made their award, by which it was determined, among other things, that Riverside county should pay to San Diego county the sum of $2,782.86, and that the net assets of San Diego county, as the same stood at the date of the act creating Riverside county, should be divided between the two counties as follows: 61,087 parts out of 71,087 parts to San Diego county and the remaining 10,000 parts-to Riverside county. This ratio of division was subsequently ratified and accepted by the respective boards of supervisors off the two counties, and partly carried out.

Before the creation of Riverside county there were 158.85 miles of railway belonging to the Southern Pacific Company within the county of San Diego upon which the taxes were [498]delinquent for the years 1880 to 1887, inclusive, no part of which taxes were paid until after reassessment in pursuance of the act of March 23, 1893 (Stats. 1893, p. 290). The taxes of 1880 to 1885, inclusive, were paid by the railroad company in 1893, and were considered and included in the award of the commissioners, and divided by the supervisors of the respective counties according to the ratio above stated. But the taxes for the years 1886 and 1887 were not then paid and were not considered or in any manner adjusted by said board of commissioners, or by said boards of supervisors. In August, 1894, and subsequent to the award of said commissioners, the taxes of 1886 and 1887 still remaining unpaid, the state board of equalization, in pursuance of said act of March 23, 1893, made reassessments of said 158.85 miles of railway for the years 1886 and 1887, but instead of apportioning and certifying the whole o! said assessments to the county of San Diego, as they should have done, they apportioned and certified the assessments upon 71.06 miles to the county of Riverside, that being the number of miles within the territory transferred from the former to' the latter county by the act of March 11, 1893. These reassessments were thereafter entered upon the tax rolls of the respective counties, according to the erroneous apportionment of the state board of equalization, and the taxes were paid by the state treasurer (by whom they were collected from the railroad company) to the treasurers of the respective counties, according to the same erroneous apportionment, the result being that, out of the whole amount paid, the county of Riverside received $7,969.65 more, and San Diego that amount less, than they would have received if-the whole amount of said delinquent taxes' had been divided according to the ratio established by the commissioners and accepted by the respective boards of supervisors as the basis of division of the net assets of San Diego county.