Ross v. Superior Court

Decision Date15 September 1977
Docket NumberS.F. 23549
Citation19 Cal.3d 899,141 Cal.Rptr. 133,569 P.2d 727
Parties, 569 P.2d 727 Leonard ROSS et al., Petitioners, v. The SUPERIOR COURT OF SACRAMENTO COUNTY, Respondent; Marion J. WOODS et al., Real Parties in Interest.
CourtCalifornia Supreme Court

Baird B. McKnight, County Counsel, Quincy, Downey, Brand, Seymour & Rohwer, John F. Downey and Stephen F. Boutin, Sacramento, for petitioners.

No appearance for respondent.

Evelle J. Younger, Atty. Gen., N. Eugene Hill, Asst. Atty. Gen., Edmund E. White, John J. Klee, Jr., John Fourt and Byron B. Chell, Deputy Attys. Gen., David F. Chavkin, J. Kendrick Kresse, Andrea J. Saltzman, David J. Rapport and Ralph S. Abascal, San Francisco, for real parties in interest.

Daniel V. Blackstock, County Counsel, Oroville (Butte), Thomas M. Kelly, County Counsel, Markleeville (Alpine), Noble Sprunger, County Counsel, Placerville (El Dorado), Charles H. Frost, County Counsel, Willows (Glenn), Charles D. Houghton County Counsel, Lakeport (Lake), Dawson Arnold, Susanville (Lassen), John Paul Baker, County Counsel, Alturas (Modoc), L. J. Dewald, County Counsel, Auburn (Placer), Robert Rehberg, County Counsel, Redding (Shasta), Edward F. Buckner, County Counsel, Yuba City (Sutter), Henry Goff, County Counsel, Red Bluff (Tehama), William R. Neill, County Counsel, Weaverville (Trinity), and James Ruddick, County Counsel, Marysville (Yuba), as amici curiae on behalf of petitioners.

TOBRINER, Acting Presiding Justice.

Petitioners Leonard Ross, Joe Crivello, Larry Dean, Ole Olsen and Russell Papenhausen, members of the Plumas County Board of Supervisors, seek review of a judgment of the Sacramento County Superior Court finding them guilty of contempt for wilfully violating a court order requiring the payment of retroactive welfare benefits. The supervisors challenge the judgment of contempt on a number of grounds, claiming (1) that, as nonparties to the original court action, they were not bound by the earlier order; (2) that the contempt proceedings were improperly instituted because the complaining parties failed to exhaust an available administrative remedy prior to seeking the contempt sanction; and (3) that the judgment is invalid because the record does not affirmatively reflect that the trial court applied the appropriate burden of proof in finding them guilty of contempt. As we explain, we have determined that none of the contentions is meritorious, and accordingly we affirm the judgment.

1. The facts.

This contempt proceeding arises in the aftermath of this court's decisions in California Welfare Rights Organization v. Brian (1974) 11 Cal.3d 237, 113 Cal.Rptr. 154, 520 A.2d 970, and Cooper v. Swoap (1974) 11 Cal.3d 856, 115 Cal.Rptr. 1, 524 P.2d 97, invalidating several state administrative welfare regulations as incompatible with the governing statutory provisions. Several months after the rendition of the Brian and Cooper decisions, plaintiffs Laura Cooper, Hazel Wilks, and Ottilia Lott filed an amended complaint in the Sacramento County Superior Court which consolidated in a single class action the claims presented in both cases; because a new state official, Mario Obledo, had been appointed as Secretary of the Health and Welfare Agency in the interim, the suit was reentitled Cooper v. Obledo. 1 The amended complaint sought declaratory and injunctive relief, including the payment of benefits improperly withheld in the past pursuant to the regulations invalidated in Brian and Cooper.

On July 28, 1975, the superior court entered judgment in the Cooper v. Obledo action, granting plaintiffs the relief sought in their amended complaint. With respect to the payment of retroactive welfare benefits, the injunctive order issued by the court provided: "The defendants, their successors in office, agents and employees will restore to plaintiffs and the class they represent the AFDC benefits unlawfully withheld pursuant to (the regulations invalidated in Brian and Cooper ) through the following procedure: (P) "a. . . . County welfare departments will redetermine AFDC eligibility and make restitution of grant amounts unlawfully withheld . . . (P) d. Within 60 days after entry of this Judgment, or as soon thereafter as administratively possible, the Department of Benefit Payments will notify all county welfare departments of the terms of this judgment and the rights of claimants, and will instruct the counties to aid and assist claimants in obtaining restitution as appropriate including reviewing every case record . . . to determine if the AFDC grant was improperly reduced by application of (the invalid regulations)."

Pursuant to this judgment, on September 18, 1975, the Department of Benefit Payments sent an "all-county letter" to each county welfare director, ordering the counties to compute and pay the retroactive welfare grants as mandated in the court order; the department attached a copy of the judgment in Cooper v. Obledo to the letter. Mona Green, the Plumas County Welfare Director, received this letter shortly thereafter and, at the November 11, 1975, meeting of the Plumas County Board of Supervisors, she informed the board of the contents and effect of the letter and the court judgment. The board immediately instructed Green not to make the retroactive payments and adopted a motion, resolving "that Plumas County not comply with the court order, as this would be an unanticipated expense for which no county funds are available."

The Director of Benefit Payments, real party in interest Marion Woods, 2 immediately advised the board of supervisors by telegram that if the board did not rescind its action of November 11, he would seek a contempt order. 3 The telegram was read at a meeting of the board on November 18, 1975, but the board refused to alter its position and voted to notify the director ". . . that the Plumas County Board of Supervisors does not intend to rescind its decision not to comply with the court order."

Thereafter, on December 3, 1975, real parties in interest Woods, Cooper, Wilks and Lott filed a motion in the Sacramento Superior Court urging that petitioners be held in contempt for wilfully violating the Cooper v. Obledo order; an affidavit of Director Woods accompanied the motion. At the hearing on the contempt motion held on January 22 and 23, 1976, real parties in interest adduced evidence establishing the above facts. In addition, real parties in interest presented the testimony of Ann Patton, the Plumas County Auditor-Controller, who stated that as of the date of the contempt hearing "around $100,000" remained in the county's "contingency appropriation" for the current fiscal year; Mona Green, the county welfare director, estimated the cost to Plumas County of the retroactive welfare payments mandated by the Cooper v. Obledo order at between $10,000 and $20,000. Petitioners did not challenge the accuracy of these officials' testimony.

At the conclusion of the hearing, the trial court adjudged petitioners guilty of contempt, specifically finding that petitioners had actual knowledge of the court order, that "funds were and are available . . . with which to comply" and that petitioners nonetheless wilfully refused to comply with the judgment. 4 The court postponed sentencing for two weeks to give petitioners another opportunity to purge themselves of contempt by agreeing to comply with the court order. At sentencing, petitioners remained resolute in their refusal to comply and the court thereupon fined each of the petitioners $500. The court stayed execution of the sentence pending this review.

2. In administering the payment of welfare benefits, the Plumas County Board of Supervisors acts as an agent of the California Department of Health and Welfare and consequently the supervisors were bound by the injunction rendered in Cooper v. Obledo.

Petitioners initially contend that the judgment of contempt is invalid because they were not bound by the injunctive order which the trial court found they had wilfully disobeyed. Petitioners emphasize that neither Plumas County nor they, as individuals, were named defendants in the Cooper v. Obledo action, and that they received no notice and were afforded no opportunity to defend that action. Under these circumstances, petitioners urge that they were denied due process by being held in contempt for violating the injunctive order issued in that case.

The United States Supreme Court faced and explicitly rejected an almost identical due process contention over three-quarters of a century ago in In re Lennon (1897) 166 U.S. 548, 17 S.Ct. 658, 41 L.Ed. 1110. In Lennon, an employee of a railroad company who had been found in contempt for violating the terms of an injunction issued against his employer, maintained that the contempt judgment was invalid in that he had not personally been a party to the action in which the injunction had been issued. The Supreme Court responded: "The facts that (the employee) was not a party to such suit, nor served with process of subpoena, nor had notice of the application made by the complainant for the mandatory injunction, nor was served by the officers of the court with such injunction are immaterial, so long as it was made to appear that he had notice of the issuing of an injunction by the court. To render (an employee) amenable to an injunction it is neither necessary that he should have been party to the suit in which the injunction was issued, nor to have been actually served with a copy of it, so long as he appears to have had actual notice. (Citations.)" (166 U.S. at p. 554, 17 S.Ct. at p. 660.)

In Berger v. Superior Court (1917) 175 Cal. 719, 721, 167 P. 143; our court reiterated and explained the contours and basic rationale of the rule applied in Lennon. We stated: "In matters of injunction . . . it has been a common practice to make the injunction run also to classes of persons through whom the enjoined...

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