Munns v. Stenman
| Decision Date | 16 July 1957 |
| Citation | 152 Cal.App.2d 543,314 P.2d 67 |
| Court | California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals |
| Parties | Daniel A. MUNNS, Jr., and Virginia Munns, Jonathan Lloyd and Ruby Lloyd, Petitioners and Respondents, v. Alex STENMAN, as Building Official of the City of Monrovia; City of Monrovia, a Municipal Corporation; and J. H. Walker, W. H. Butikofer, Rodger Ferguson, Elza Silcott and Robert Thomas, as members of the City Council of said City, Defendants and Appellants. Civ. 22178. |
Homer H. Bell, City Atty. of the City of Monrovia, Monrovia, O'Melveny & Myers, Pierce Works, Howard J. Deards and William D. Moore, Los Angeles, for appellants.
LeSage & Bowman, Pasadena, for respondents.
The City of Monrovia, a sixth class municipal corporation, its Building Official and the members of its City Council, appeal from a judgment commanding them and other officials required to pass upon building permits to issue such a permit to petitioners, Daniel A. Munns, Jr. and Virginia Munns, authorizing construction of a single family residence upon property owned by them in the Hidden Valley area of said municipality; also to issue to petitioners Jonathan Lloyd and Ruby Lloyd 1 a like building permit for their lot situated in the same area.
Hidden Valley is a hillside and valley area situated in the northerly part of the city of Monrovia. Before presentation of Munns' application for a permit (which was prior to that of Lloyd) there were some 14 residences in the valley and 30 unimproved residence sites; those homes had been constructed subsequent to July 1, 1946.
On November 3, 1953, Mr. Munns, an architectural deaftsman, presented to the building department of the city an application for a permit to construct a $20,000 residence upon a lot which he had purchased in March, 1952. The application was accompanied by appropriate plans in which the building department found no deficiencies and to which they made no objections. No permit was issued. Mr. Fritz Zapf, City Engineer, told Munns about two weeks after the application was filed that 'permits were not being issued in the area and he was not allowed to issue any.'
This official attitude reflected a policy which the city had put into effect some months prior to Munns' application. The City Manager, City Engineer, City Attorney and other officials had concluded that the existing parcels in the valley, improved and unimproved, did not comply with the State law or local ordinances prescribing conditions for subdivisions; that they were part of an illegal subdivision; and that all of such parcels should be brought into line with local subdivision requirements before any building permits would be granted. This involved uncompensated dedication of land for public streets, revamping of property holdings to conform to the subdivision ordinance,--'requirements as to size, shape, location, grade, access, provisions for public utilities, etc.' (quoting appellants' opening brief). Munns and Lloyd were not subdividers, had no intention of becoming such, and had purchased their lands without any knowledge of the claim of an unlawful subdivision; they had not participated in any of the acts alleged to have effected that illegal result. The court found that appellants 'have from time to time, asserted to petitioners that the entire Hidden Valley area would have to comply with various subdivision standards before petitioners would be granted permission to use their land for R-1 purposes;' also that 'the actions and conduct of the respondents [appellants] taken under the color of said ordinances, but not dictated by or justified by said ordinances, followed a general policy from time to time asserted by the respondent city and its officers, that the entire Hidden Valley area would have to comply with various standards and that various improvements never specifically defined or stated would have to be made before building permits would be issued to petitioners Lloyds and Munns.' Petitioners had no control over other property holders, whose existing residences had been erected under permits from the city building department. The reply brief piously concedes that '[e]veryone can sympathize with petitioners who have invested $3,500 in lots and are presently unable to build on them.'
The building ordinance then in effect, No. 1190, contained no such requirements for a permit and prior to enactment of amending ordinance No. 1200, on December 1, 1953, the city officials who refused building permits had no better authority than their own ipse dixit. That ordinance was introduced and had its first reading on November 17, 1953. It was on that day that City Engineer Zapf told petitioner Munns he was not allowed to issue any permits in the Hidden Valley area. 'He said, however, because I have the frontage on Alta Vista Avenue they could not deny me a permit, but I would have to put up a bond guaranteeing I would put up a six-foot fence fronting on Hidden Valley Road before they would issue a permit for it, and if I did so they would issue a permit for it.' Also, Of course Munns did not consent to this.
Accepting as we must all evidence and inferences favorable to respondents (New v. New, 148 Cal.App.2d 372, 306 P.2d 987), it appears that the background facts are as follows. Munns' lot has three frontages, Alta Vista Avenue, Cloverleaf Road and Hidden Valley Road; the city claimed (and now claims, contrary to the trial judge's finding) that none of them was a dedicated public street except Alta Vista Avenue. Munns has a curved frontage of 81 feet on that street, 82 feet on Hidden Valley Road, and 67 feet on Cloverleaf Road. The Alta Vista frontage is the highest part of his land. The court found 'that the property of petitioner Munns has an area sufficient for residential building purposes of sloping but not steep land extending to the rear part of the land of said Munns where it rises sharply upwards to Alta Vista Avenue, a formally dedicated public street, and access by automobile from Munns' property to Alta Vista Avenue is not presently practicable in its natural condition.' Petitioner's plans as submitted showed a driveway from the house to Alta Vista. Petitioner told Mr. Zapf that he intended to build such a driveway but the city officials, apparently not believing that he would do so, insisted upon bottling him up so that he could have no ingress or egress at all over the more convenient arteries of Cloverleaf and Hidden Valley Roads.
This plan of coercing all the valley residents into revamping their properties to conform to the city's existing subdivision ordinance--doing so through the withholding of permits from those who had not yet built--was carried into ordinance No. 1200 which was introduced on the same day as the Munns-Zapf conversation, November 17th, and enacted on December 1, 1953. Munns had no notice or information concerning it before its introduction. It carries an emergency clause and adds to the existing ordinance a section 6.1, reading as follows: 'Before any permit may be issued, except for repair or minor remodeling of an existing structure, it must appear that:
'(a) All laws of the City of Monrovia pertaining to zoning, subdivision, set-back lines, fire, and other laws, rules and regulations, applicable to the property for which the permit is sought have been complied with, and that the granting of said permit will not result in a contravention of any such law, rule or regulation of the City of Monrovia.
'(b) The lot, parcel, or unit of land for which the permit is sought has a minimum frontage of abutment on a dedicated street of not less than 33 feet, and access for automobiles and other vehicles and for pedestrians shall be provided to and from said dedicated street over said frontage of abutment.
'(c) The lot, parcel or unit of land for which the permit is sought conforms in all respects as to size, shape, location, grade, access, provision for public utilities, including water, electricity, gas, telephone mail delivery, sewers, drainage, garbage collection, street surfacing, curbs, gutters and other improvements and specifications, to the requirements which would be imposed upon said property if it were a part of land proposed to be subdivided under any ordinance of the City of Monrovia. 'Access' as herein required shall be by dedicated street as hereinabove provided.
'(d) The use for which said permit is sought will not materially increase the danger of fire or flood or the results of fire or flood, and will not be detrimental to health or sanitation.' All of its provisions, including that requiring 33 feet of front-age upon a dedicated public street and the providing of access from such street, were new.
On November 25, Munns appeared before the City Council with an attorney and presented a letter declaring his ignorance of any alleged illegal subdivision, reciting his previous efforts to obtain a building permit, anc containing this offer: 'I therefore offer by this letter, to grant your city whatever is necessary up to twenty-five of my land, measured from the center line of Hidden Valley Road as it is existing, for the purposes of widening that road.' The City Attorney was delegated the task of preparing an agreement. The document thus drawn and presented to petitioner contains these recitals: 'whereas, the area commonly known as 'Hidden Valley' is an area reached by a roadway which is an a dedicated street; and Whereas, it is contemplated that a survey will be made to determine the proper and practical location of a street, together with public utilities, and that all of...
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...action.) The limitations expressed in the rule in Pratt disclose the inadequacy of the weapon of future control. In Munns v. Stenman (1957) 152 Cal.App.2d 543, 314 P.2d 67, the court upheld the grant of a writ ordering the issuance of a building permit to landowners who had no knowledge of ......
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