Sanders v. City of Los Angeles

• Decision Date: 14 October 1970
• Citation: 3 Cal.3d 252,90 Cal.Rptr. 169,475 P.2d 201
• Court: California Supreme Court
• Parties: , 475 P.2d 201 Eugene R. SANDERS et al., Plaintiffs and Respondents, v. CITY OF LOS ANGELES et al., Defendants and Appellants. L.A. 29722, 29723.

Page 169

90 Cal.Rptr. 169

3 Cal.3d 252, 475 P.2d 201

Eugene R. SANDERS et al., Plaintiffs and Respondents, v. CITY OF LOS ANGELES et al., Defendants and Appellants.

L.A. 29722, 29723.

Supreme Court of California in Bank.

Oct. 14, 1970.

Rehearing Denied Nov. 10, 1970.

Roger Arnebergh, City Atty., Bourke Jones and Jack L. Wells, Asst. City Attys., and John B. Rice, Deputy City Atty., for defendants and appellants.

Ball, Hunt, Hart & Brown, Joseph A. Ball, Long Beach, Lowenthal & Lowenthal, Morris Lowenthal, San Francisco, Wikle, Atkinson, Boller & Falls, Walter Atkinson and David B. Boller, Los Angeles, as amici curiae on behalf of defendants and appellants.

Lemaire, Mohi, Morales, Dumas & Song, Cy H. Lemaire, Frank C. Morales, Los Angeles and Herman F. Selvin, Beverly Hills, for plaintiffs and respondents.

Richard Salle and E. Jerald Haws, Santa Barbara as amici curiae on behalf of plaintiffs and respondents.

McCOMB, Acting Chief Justice.

This matter has been in litigation since 1962. In that year representative actions were brought, Sanders, et al., on behalf of employees, other than firemen or policemen, of the City of Los Angeles and Forbes, et al., on behalf of firemen and policemen, against the city and certain of its departments for a declaratory judgment and writ of mandate. ¹ Substantially identical judgments and writs were issued and defendants were ordered to fix the salaries and wages of these employees for the fiscal year 1962--1963 pursuant to section 425 of the city charter which the defendants had failed to do. The judgment and writs became final June 25, 1963, no appeal having been taken. At the hearings upon the return to the writs the trial court found that the writs had been complied with and ordered them discharged. Separate appeals were taken. In the present action the order of the trial court was reversed and the court was directed to order defendants to comply with the writ and to make any further appropriate orders to compel obedience thereto. (Sanders v. City of Los Angeles (1967) 252 Cal.App.2d 488, 60 Cal.Rptr. 539; petition for rehearing denied August 7, 1967, petition for hearing by this court denied September 7, 1967.) In the proceeding brought on behalf of the members of the fire and police department, the orders were affirmed (Forbes v. City of Los Angeles (1965) 2d Civ. 28819, certified for nonpublication in Official Reports under rule 976).

Following the remittitur herein, another return was filed by defendants, contested hearings were held thereon, and the return was rejected. On August 14, 1968, the court ordered that defendants pay certain salary and wage increases retroactively. On October 22, 1968, further orders were entered, predicated upon the August order, which required the payment of interest and attorneys' fees. The present appeal is from these two orders.

The background of this litigation is fully stated in Sanders v. City of Los Angeles, supra, 252 Cal.App.2d 488, 60 Cal.Rptr. 539.

In 1925 section 425 of the Charter of the City of Los Angeles was enacted. It provides that 'In fixing the compensation to be paid to persons in the city's employ, the Council and every other authority authorized to fix salaries or wages, shall, in each instance, provide a salary or wage at least equal to the prevailing salary or wage for the same quality of service rendered to private persons, firms or corporations under similar employment, in cash such prevailing salary or wage can be ascertained.' This section was not implemented by appropriate ordinances until 1945 when a five-step classification and compensation plan was adopted (Salary Standardization Ordinance No. 89,100). Under section 5.1 of Ordinance No. 89,100, as amended by Ordinance No. 107,047, it is provided that: '(b) * * * The City Administrative Officer is hereby directed to make a salary survey at least once each year and to present his report on such salary survey to the City Council on or before April 10 of each year by filing the same with the City Clerk. Such report shall contain summary findings on prevailing salaries or wages of positions in a representative sample of business establishments in the City of Los Angeles metropolitan area and the positions in other governmental agencies which have positions comparable to those in the city service, together with recommendations, if any, for changes in salary schedules applicable to all classes of positions in the city service.' The ordinance requires the council to make the salaries so fixed effective as of July 1 of each year.

Annual surveys were made and interviews conducted to determine whether there were positions in private industry comparable to city jobs and, if so, the scale of salaries being paid. Comparsion was not attempted as to all jobs, but those so compared were known as benchmark positions. From the salaries ascertained for these positions, prevailing wages and salaries were ascertained for related classes by a process of extrapolation. As a result of the survey made in 1962 the City Administrative Officer recommended to the city council that it provide salary increases for 10,367 non-uniformed employees in 16 benchmark positions and 563 classes totalling $3,529,108, and that increases of approximately $3,500,000 be paid to members of the fire and police departments for the fiscal year 1962--1963. The council approved and it requested the city attorney to prepare an ordinance to this effect. This ordinance was adopted July 16, 1962, but was vetoed by the Mayor for budgetary reasons. The council failed to override his veto. Several weeks later the council readopted the same ordinance but made it effective as of January 5 (later changed to January 6), 1963. This left a hiatus between July 1, 1962, and January 6, 1963, of approximately $1.8 million in salary and wage increases unpaid.

In seeking declaratory relief these plaintiffs asked in the alternative (1) that defendants be mandated to proceed to make the ascertainment and to provide the prevailing wages and salaries as ascertained or (2) that defendants be required to adopt an ordinance similar to the vetoed ordinance. The declaratory judgment declared that the provisions of section 425 of the charter were mandatory; that the duties of the wage-fixing authorities include a quasi-judicial, non-legislative, fact-finding function preceding or accompanying the fixing of compensation and that it was the duty of each defendant on or before July 1 of each year to ascertain the prevailing wages and as of July 1 of each year to provide the salary or wage for each instance of employment at least equal to the said prevailing salary or wage so ascertained.

The writ commanded the wage-fixing authorities 'on or before July 1 of each year, to ascertain through any appropriate administrative procedure, in each instance of employment in the city's employ * * * the prevailing salary or wage for the same quality of service rendered to private persons * * * under similar employment where such prevailing salary or wage can be ascertained. (Not having performed this duty on or before July 1, 1962, you must now do so and make such ascertainments as of July 1, 1962.)' It further provided that once the prevailing salaries and wages were ascertained 'you and each of you shall provide additional salaries and wages to each person for whom you are authorized to fix a salary or wage * * * where additional salaries or wages are necessary so as to provide a salary or wage at least equal to the prevailing salary or wage for the same quality of service rendered to private persons, firms or corporations under similar employment in case such prevailing salary or wage can be ascertained, retroactive to July 1, 1962.'

In the first return filed to this writ defendants reported that they had recommended, and the city council and other defendants had ascertained, that the salaries being paid to city employees for the period in question were factually and legally sufficient and that no adjustment (increases) were required. The writ was discharged. Plaintiffs appealed and the order of discharge was reversed. It was held on appeal that it was arbitrary in the extreme for the City Administrative Officer to have discarded the standard formula, which was fair and equitable to the city employees, and adopted new formulas for the obvious purpose of convincing the council that the action taken to grant increases for 1962--1963 was a 'mistake'; that the city failed to justify this 'about-face' in recommending on the same facts that no increases were due; that as the adviser of the council and the responsible city official this was not merely an abuse of discretion and a flagrant breach of duty on the part of the City Administrative Officer but that it had polluted all the subsequent proceedings which were based upon his representations and recommendations.

After the remittitur went down the original writ was reissued. The City Administrative Officer again used the 1962 salary survey data, as he had in 1963, again discarded use of the standard formulas and applied new formulas, and as a result he found and recommended increases in salary and wages to four benchmark positions totalling 1,033 employees in the sum of $155,000, as opposed to the sixteen bench-mark positions totalling 10,367 employees in the sum of $1,800,000 in 1962. The Personnel and Finance Committees conducted their own hearings and they recommended the adoption of the salaries and wages ascertained by the 1962 ordinance. On April 30, 1968, the Council voted in favor of this recommendation, but in its vote on May 28, 1968, the ordinance failed to pass. On June 24, 1968, the council voted in favor of an ordinance which carried out the 1968 recommendations of the City Administrative Officer. Defendants filed a return to the writ and requested its discharge.

The trial court rejected the return and on August 14, 1968, ordered defendants 'to proceed at once...