Security-First Nat. Bank v. Board of Sup'rs of Los Angeles County, SECURITY-FIRST

• Decision Date: 02 May 1950
• Docket Number: SECURITY-FIRST
• Citation: 217 P.2d 948,35 Cal.2d 323
• Court: California Supreme Court
• Parties: NAT. BANK v. BOARD OF SUP'RS OF LOS ANGELES COUNTY et al. L. A. 20903.

Page 948

217 P.2d 948

35 Cal.2d 323

SECURITY-FIRST NAT. BANK v. BOARD OF SUP'RS OF LOS ANGELES COUNTY et al.

L. A. 20903.

Supreme Court of California, in Bank.

May 2, 1950.

Rehearing Denied June 1, 1950.

Holbrook & Tarr, W. Sumner Holbrook, Jr., Freda B. Walbrecht and Francis H. O'Neill, Los Angeles, for appellant.

Harold W. Kennedy, in pro. per., County Counsel, Gordon Boller, Deputy County Counsel, A. Curtis Smith, Asst. County Counsel, Ray L. Chesebro, in pro. per., City Atty., Leon Thomas David, Asst. City Atty., Hugh H. MacDonald and Louis A. Babior, Deputy City Attys., Los Angeles, for respondents.

GIBSON, Chief Justice.

This is an appeal from a judgment denying relief against allegedly discriminatory assessments for the 1947 tax year on buildings owned and occupied by a national bnak. The action was brought in the court below upon the theory that the discriminatory assessment practices complained of and found to exist during the 1941-1946 period in Simms v. County of Los Angeles, Cal.Sup., 217 P.2d 936, were continued in 1947 and rendered invalid the assessments for that year of petitioner's buildings. Relief was sought in the alternative as follows: (1) writ of certiorari to review and annul the action of the board of equalization in refusing to reduce petitioner's assessments by eliminating therefrom the value of bank vault doors and counterlines; (2) writ of mandate compelling the board of equalization to order the assessor to cancel the assertedly discriminatory assessments and to enter new assessments under section 1611 of the Revenue and Taxation Code ¹; and (3) writ of mandate ordering the board of supervisors to cancel the assessments, and any taxes subsequently levied thereon, under section 4986 ² of the Revenue & Taxation Code on the ground that they were void.

The record of the proceedings before the board of equalization was introduced at the trial, and additional evidence which tended to show the general assessment practice followed in the County of Los Angeles was admitted on the application for a writ of mandate under section 4986. In connection with the applications for certiorari and for mandate to compel cancellation of the assessments under section 1611, the trial court considered itself limited to a review of the record made before the board of equalization and concluded therefrom that there had been no discrimination during 1947. The court also reached the same conclusion on the basis of the expanded showing which it permitted in connection with the application for a writ of mandate to compel the board of supervisors to cancel the assessments under section 4986.

Petitioner's principal contention is that the trial court's conclusion that discrimination was not shown is inconsistent with the decision reached by the same trial court in Simms v. County of Los Angeles, supra. Petitioner argues that the record in this case is substantially the same as that made in the Simms case, and that the evidence which showed the banks or their landlords had been discriminated against between 1941 and 1946 also proved the existence of discriminatory assessments during 1947. the evidence in the present case, however, is sufficiently different from that introduced in the Simms case to justify the divergent conclusions reached by the trial court.

In both cases there was evidence that various specific articles of machinery, equipment and trade fixtures, as illustrated by a series of photographs, were in fact assessed as personal property. In the Simms case, however, it was stipulated that it was the general practice of the assessor to classify as personalty other property which was similar to that depicted. This stipulation established for the purpose of the Simms case that the articles shown in the photographs were much more than mere isolated examples which might not be typical of the assessment practice in Los Angeles County. In the present case, on the other hand, respondents instead of making that stipulation, have contended that the classification made of the property depicted in the photographs was not representative of the general practice followed in assessing similar property, and the trial court found that petitioner had failed to establish what was the general practice of the assessor in 1947 in that regard.

Another material difference between the record in the present case and that in the Simms case is that it was proved here that the assessor, early in 1947, reclassified certain trade fixtures which previously had been assessed as personalty. He did so in order to comply with the decision in Trabue Pittman Corp. v. County of Los Angeles, 29 Cal.2d 385, 175 P.2d 512, rendered in December, 1946, which held that such fixtures should be assessed as realty. Since the time and personnel available did not premit complete review of all personal property assessments, the assessor selected for reclassification about 10,000 tax statements. This selection included all tax statements covering personalty in an amount of $10,000 or more which indicated that fixtures were included therein. On 7,500 of the statements, property of the stipulated value of $6,000,000, which formerly had been assessed as personalty, was reclassified as improvements. These facts tend to show, and the trial court found, that the assessor adopted a reasonable reclassification procedure which was designed to eliminate the...