Consolidated Rock Products Co. v. City of Los Angeles

• Decision Date: 12 April 1962
• Citation: 57 Cal.2d 515,370 P.2d 342,20 Cal.Rptr. 638
• Court: California Supreme Court
• Parties: , 370 P.2d 342 CONSOLIDATED ROCK PRODUCTS COMPANY et al., Plaintiffs and Appellants, v. The CITY OF LOS ANGELES, Defendant and Respondent. L. A. 26566.

Page 638

20 Cal.Rptr. 638

57 Cal.2d 515, 370 P.2d 342

CONSOLIDATED ROCK PRODUCTS COMPANY et al., Plaintiffs and Appellants, v. The CITY OF LOS ANGELES, Defendant and Respondent.

L. A. 26566.

Supreme Court of California, In Bank.

April 12, 1962.

Rehearing Denied May 9, 1962.

Donald J. Dunne, Los Angeles, for plaintiffs and appellants.

Roger Arnebergh, City Atty., Bourke Jones and Claude E. Hilker, Asst. City Attys., for defendant and respondent.

Peter T. Rice, Los Angeles, as amicus curiae on behalf of defendant and respondent.

DOOLING, Justice.

This is an appeal from a judgment for defendant in an action seeking declaratory relief and to enjoin defendant from enforcing a zoning restriction alleged to be unconstitutional insofar as it applies to prevent rock and gravel operations on plaintiffs' property.

Plaintiff Valley Real Estate Company is the owner and Consolidated Rock Products Company is the lessee of 348 acres of land situated in the watercourse known as the Tujunga Wash, and lying northeasterly (upstream) of Hansen Dam in the San Fernando Valley. This property about two miles long and one-quarter mile wide runs in a generally east-west direction and is divided approximately in the center by Foothill Boulevard, a north-south roadway at that point. The property forms substantially the apex of the Tujunga Cone, the second largest alluvial cone of rock, sand and gravel in Los Angeles County. The Tujunga Wash from the eastern to the western termini of the subject property is bordered on the north by the base of the mountains and on the south by bluffs of low hills except for relatively narrow plateaus on either side above the level of the land. The property is composed of rock, sand and gravel to a depth of about 40 feet. It is isolated from land presently being used for other purposes and is situated in a natural amphitheater surrounded by the rugged terrain of the Angeles National Forest on the north, by Tujunga Canyon on the east, by Hansen Dam and its debris basin on the west, and by high hills and cliffs on the south.

Except for the Livingston Rock and Gravell Plant on 125 acres contiguous to the westerly portion of plaintiffs' property an operation conducted since 1961, now substantially depleted in the course of some 30 years' activity, and with but a doubtful number of remaining years left for economic extraction rock and gravel operations in the Tujunga Wash have been confined to the area downstream from Hansen Dam. Since 1946 defendant City of Los Angeles has not created any new rock and gravel districts upstream from Hansen Dam but has specifically denied applications for such designated districts upon premises immediately adjacent to plaintiffs' property.

The twin residential communities of Sunland and Tujunga adjoin plaintiffs' property, with their mainly developed portions lying east and southeast thereof. In recent years the trend of development in these communities has been in a westerly direction toward plaintiffs' property and along and upon the bluffs north and south thereof.

Plaintiffs' property 348 acres is zoned for agricultural and residential use; and rock, sand and gravel operations are prohibited thereon. During the trial, the trial judge pursuant to stipulation of counsel made an extensive tour of plaintiffs' property and the surrounding area.

The trial court found that the subject property has great value if used for rock, sand and gravel excavation but 'no appreciable economic value' for any other purpose, and in view of the 'continuing flood hazard and the nature of the soil,' any suggestion that the property has economic nomic value for any other use, including those uses for which it was zoned, 'is preposterous.' With respect to the effect that rock and gravel excavating operations would have on nearby residential communities, the trial court found that the 'creation of dust for air-borne convection' could be 'reduced to a point of pollution below an acceptable standard,' that the 'inevitable' noise could be controlled to the point where it would be 'minimal,' that there would be no extraordinary danger to children; and in summation, that the 'business of excavating * * * rock, sand and gravel and activities incidental and related thereto can be conducted on the plaintiffs' said property with compatibility to adjacent properties and with minimal detriment to the living amenities of health conditions of the inhabitants of adjacent properties or in the general area and without probable depreciation in property values to the adjacent properties.'

While expressing these views on vital matters affecting the 'public health' of the abjacent communities, the trial court further found that they 'are all factors which, in their totality, the legislative body (the Los Angeles City Council) may properly consider and act upon' and that 'reasonable minds might differ and have differed upon these' factors. ¹

The trial court also found that 'the Sunland-Tujunga area * * * has a national reputation as a haven for sufferers from respiratory ailments and is inhabited by many such sufferers and that a considerable portion of its economy is based upon such reputation'; that 'the possible advent of a substantial rock, sand and gravel extraction and processing operation upon the subject property has caused considerable apprehension to the reaidents and the communities of Sunland and Tujunga of air pollution, traffic and other dangers and annoyances as result thereof'; and that 'a rock and gravel operation upon the subject property could adversely affect that reputation of the Sunland-Tujunga area as a haven for sufferers from respiratory ailments.'

There was substantial evidence that even though operated with all possible safeguards, the extraction of sand and gravel from the subject property would still create appreciable quantities of dust, which would be carried by the prevailing winds to the residences and sanitariums of Sunland and Tujunga; that this dust would have a damaging effect upon the sufferers from respiratory ailments; and also that such operations would adversely affect property values in those communities. The trial court concluded that plaintiff's property was 'not arbitrarily, capriciously or unreasonably zoned' under the ordinances prohibiting rock and gravel operations thereon; and that such zoning was 'not discriminatory' nor did it offend constitutional guarantees protecting plaintiffs' property rights. (U.S.Const., 5th and 14th Amends.; Cal.Const., art. I, §§ 1, 13 and 14.) Accordingly, judgment was entered for defendant.

Plaintiffs argue that the zoning restriction in its application to their property is unconstitutional and void as being: (a) a denial of due process; (b) a denial of equal protection of the laws; (c) a taking of private property for public use without compensation; and (d) discriminatory in operation. They claim that the record clearly shows that their property is socalled 'one use property,' having economic value only for the excavation of rock, sand and gravel; and that under the guise of enforcing police regulations, defendant is guilty of 'an unwarranted and arbitrary interference with' their constitutional right 'to carry on a lawful business' so as to render their property valueless.

The trial judge in his findings and conclusions of law which he drew therefrom showed a clear recognition of the respective functions of the legislative body in enacting a comprehensive zoning ordinance and of the courts in passing upon the constitutionality of such legislation. The origin and rapid growth and acceptance of the principle of comprehensive zoning as a constitutionally valid method of the regulation of the uses to which an owner might put his real property was a phenomenon of the late teens and early twenties of the present century. The first comprehensive zoning ordinance in the United States was enacted in 1916 in the City of New York (Miller v. Board of Public Works, 195 Cal. 477, 485, 234 P. 381, 38 A.L.R. 1479), and in the space of nine years when this court first sustained the constitutionality of the principle in the Miller case in 1925, a bulletin of the United States Department of Commerce showed that '35 states and the District of Columbia have adopted this form of regulation; 221 municipalities have been zoned and over 22,000,000 inhabitants, aggregating 40 per cent. of the urban population of this country, are living in zoned territory.' (Miller v. Board of Public Works, supra, p. 486, 234 P. at page 384.) This court further commented in Miller at page 486, 234 P. at page 384: 'The rapidity of the growth of the sentiment in favor of comprehensive zoning, coupled with the extensive and successful application of the idea, are evidence of its present and potential value for the promotion and perpetuation, along broader and better lines, of the moral and material welfare of a people.' When the Supreme Court of the United States in 1926 set its seal of approval upon the constitutionality of this then new type of legislation in Euclid v. Ambler Realty Company, 272 U.S. 365, 47 S.Ct. 114, 71 L.Ed. 303, the cycle was completed, and comprehensive zoning in the short space of ten years had taken its place as a constitutionally recognized part of our legal and political system. We indulge in this bit of legal history because, as will appear, plaintiffs place their principal reliance upon language first found in cases decided long before the principle of comprehensive zoning was anywhere applied in this country or its constitutionality established.

Those early zoning cases laid down the broad pattern of the rules by which the constitutionality of such legislation is to be tested in the courts. Thus in Euclid v. Ambler Realty Company, supra, 272 U.S. at page 387, 47 S.Ct. at page 118, Mr. Justice Sutherland speaking for the court, said: 'Regulations, the wisdom, necessity and validity of which, as applied to existing...