City of Galena Park v. City of Houston

• Decision Date: 19 October 1939
• Docket Number: No. 10953.,10953.
• Citation: 133 S.W.2d 162
• Parties: CITY OF GALENA PARK et al. v. CITY OF HOUSTON.
• Court: Texas Court of Appeals

133 S.W.2d 162

CITY OF GALENA PARK et al. v. CITY OF HOUSTON.

No. 10953.

Court of Civil Appeals of Texas. Galveston.

October 19, 1939.

Rehearing Denied November 16, 1939.

Appeal from District Court, Harris County; Ben F. Wilson, Judge.

Proceeding between the City of Galena Park and others and the City of Houston involving question as to which of the parties had jurisdiction over a portion of the Houston Ship Channel which the former undertook to include within its corporate limits. From an adverse judgment, the former appeal.

Affirmed.

James G. Donovan and Wilmot F. Warner, both of Houston, for appellants.

Sewall Myer, City Atty., and Vernon Coe, A. L. Lewis, and Will Sears, Asst. City Attys., all of Houston, for appellee.

GRAVES, Justice.

On April 18, 1913, the City of Houston, by an ordinance in all respects appropriating such power to do that as was granted it (a duly qualified city) under a general law of the State passed March 17, 1913, now appearing as Chapter 14, Title 28, or Articles 1183 to 1187, inclusive, of the Revised Statutes of Texas, extended its boundaries for an air-line distance of 20 miles from its then eastern limit-line down and along Buffalo Bayou and the Houston Ship Channel, so as to include within the City for that distance such navigable stream, together with the land adjoining it on both sides for 2500 feet each way, from the threads thereof.

Thereafter, in 1935, the City of Galena Park, a small town incorporated under the general law, and pursuant to the statutes authorizing such municipalities in prescribed manner and circumstances to enlarge their boundaries, undertook to incorporate and include within its limits for general purposes a portion of the land so contiguous to Buffalo Bayou and the Houston Ship Channel that had theretofore been annexed to and appropriated by the City of Houston, under the ordinance referred to.

This cause, as between these two cities— the appellant and the appellee—both below and here, involved the single question as to which one of them had jurisdiction and control over that portion of the ship channel strip the appellant thus undertook to include within its own corporate limits.

The effect of the judgment of the trial court, from which this appeal proceeds, after the elimination of other issues and parties, was to hold that the stated effort of Galena Park to incorporate into its limits (and thereafter to control) that portion of the land lying within the previously incorporated larger strip by the City of Houston was abortive, null, and void, because the City of Houston had so acquired prior and exclusive jurisdiction and control thereof.

The rival claims to the disputed territory—that of the City of Houston being first in time, and all the other facts being undisputed—are thought to depend upon the construction that should be given cited Chapter 14, Title 28, of our Revised Statutes, headed "Cities on Navigable Streams"; its enactment in 1913, Acts 1913, c. 25, was attended by an emergency clause thus further enunciating the intent and objective of the Legislature in passing it:

"Sec. 3. The fact that there is now no law vesting in the larger cities of the State, situated upon navigable streams, the authority and power to efficiently provide navigation, wharfage and facilities therefor, and to regulate same, creates an emergency and an imperative public necessity, that the constitutional rule requiring bills to be read on three several days be suspended, and that this Act take effect and be in force from and after its passage, and it is so enacted."

As before indicated, the City of Houston, being then situated upon the navigable stream of Buffalo Bayou, and being in existence under a special charter, one month after its passage adopted the necessary ordinance and thereby took advantage of such newly declared public policy of the state, then extending its jurisdiction over the 20-mile strip—inclusive of the portion here in controversy—and has ever since maintained and exercised it.

This prompt action was apparently in consonance with the Legislature's expressed view—in the quoted emergency clause recitation—that such a vesting of power in the larger cities of the state was even then "an imperative public necessity". It must, therefore, have been intended to thereby vest in the cities so situated effective power to thereafter "efficiently provide navigation, wharfage and facilities therefor, and to regulate same."

When the detailed provisions of the Act are looked to, such policy seems all the more plain, the specific purposes being set out in these four successive Articles Nos. 1183 to 1186, inclusive. There is then appended Article 1187, which, though last in order, is worthy of mention first as reflecting clear light upon what was intended in the preceding four. It runs as follows:

"The power granted in the four preceding articles shall not authorize the extension of the territory of any city for the limited purposes named so as to include any land which is already part of any other city or town corporation whether incorporated under the general laws or under special law, or any land at the time belonging to any other...