St. James Church of Christ Holiness v. Superior Court In and For Los Angeles County

• Decision Date: 08 September 1955
• Citation: 135 Cal.App.2d 352,287 P.2d 387
• Court: California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals
• Parties: ST. JAMES CHURCH OF CHRIST HOLINESS, Petitioner, v. SUPERIOR COURT of the State of California, IN AND FOR the COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES, Respondent. Civ. 21151.

Page 387

287 P.2d 387

135 Cal.App.2d 352

ST. JAMES CHURCH OF CHRIST HOLINESS, Petitioner, v. SUPERIOR COURT of the State of California, IN AND FOR the COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES, Respondent.

Civ. 21151.

District Court of Appeal, Second District, Division 3, California.

Sept. 8, 1955.

Marshall Denton, Jr., Los Angeles, for petitioner.

Harold W. Kennedy, County Counsel, and Wm. E. Lamoreaux, Deputy County Counsel, Los Angeles, for respondent.

No appearance for the real party in interest.

VALLEE, Justice.

Petitioner seeks a writ of mandamus to compel the superior court to assume and exercise jurisdiction of an action in which it is the plaintiff and Daniel Boone is the defendant.

On December 17, 1954 petitioner filed an action in the superior court in and for the county of Los Angeles, number 643595. The complaint named Daniel Boone as the sole defendant. Complaint and summons were served. The superior court on its own motion transferred the action to the municipal court on the ground jurisdiction was in the latter court. The municipal court transferred the action back to the superior court on the ground jurisdiction was in that court. The superior court then refused to assume or exercise jurisdiction and caused the following order to be entered: 'This Court declines to hear this matter or make any order herein on the ground the Court does not have jurisdiction. The Municipal Court has the exclusive jurisdiction of this matter.' This proceeding followed and an alternative writ issued.

Mandamus is the proper remedy to compel the superior court to act if it erroneously refuses to assume and exercise jurisdiction. Texas Co. v. Superior Court, 27 Cal.App.2d 651, 654, 81 P.2d 575; Harrison v. Superior Court, 3 Cal.App.2d 469, 471, 39 P.2d 825; Ingalls v. Superior Court, 121 Cal.App. 453, 454, 9 P.2d 266.

The Constitution gives the superior court original jurisdiction in all civil cases and proceedings except those in which jurisdiction is given by law to municipal or to justices or other inferior courts, with exceptions not material here. Const. art. VI, § 5. The Constitution empowers the Legislature to provide by general law for the jurisdiction of municipal courts. Const. art. VI, § 11. Section 89 of the Code of Civil Procedure is the general law which gives municipal courts original jurisdiction of certain civil cases and proceedings. So far as relevant, it gives municipal courts original jurisdiction: in all cases at law in which the demand, exclusive of interest, amounts to $3,000 or less; '[t]o issue temporary restraining orders and preliminary injunctions, to take accounts, and to appoint receivers, where necessary to preserve the property or rights of any party to an action of which the court has jurisdiction;' 'of all cases in equity to try title to personal property when the amount involved is not more than three thousand dollars ($3,000).' The superior courts are courts of general jurisdiction, while the jurisdiction of municipal courts is limited to cases and proceedings in which it is expressly conferred. In re Shaw, 115 Cal.App.2d 753, 755, 252 P.2d 970.

The test of the jurisdiction of a court is to be found in the nature of the case as made by the complaint and the relief sought. Code Civ.Proc. § 396; Silverman v. Greenberg, 12 Cal.2d 252, 254, 83 P.2d 293. The allegations of the pleading and the relief sought establish the character of the action. (Id.) The prayer of the complaint does not conclude the question of jurisdiction, regardless of the allegations on which it is founded.

The complaint in action 643595, filed December 17, 1954, alleges:

1. The plaintiff is a religious corporation. Evans, Mrs. C. Boone, Macky, and Sampson are trustees of the plaintiff. The defendant, Daniel Boone, is also a duly elected and qualified trustee of the plaintiff but is not now acting as such and has not acted as such for almost a year last past. He has failed to attend regular and special meetings of the trustees after notice and has failed and refused to cooperate as trustee in conducting the affairs fairs and business of the plaintiff. The action is commenced pursuant to a resolution of the board of trustees of the plaintiff.

2. During the month of June 1954, the defendant, Daniel Boone, 'acting as an individual trustee and without prior consultation, knowledge or consent of the remaining' trustees and without a resolution or meeting of the board of trustees, executed a purported one-year lease of the church premises of the plaintiff to third parties at a rental of $40 a month. Since executing the purported lease, the defendant has collected and received $240 from such third parties as rent for the plaintiff's church property. The defendant 'now holds and has the possession' of the $240 and refuses to pay it over or make it available to the plaintiff notwithstanding numerous demands made on him.

3. The defendant has threatened and now threatens to continue to hold the $240 and to continue the collection of the monthly rental against the will of the plaintiff and without right, notwithstanding numerous demands to desist and discontinue.

4. The third party tenants are ready, willing, and also to pay the $40 rental to the plaintiff upon assurance by the plaintiff to them that they may legally do so without liability to the defendant. The defendant has heretofore and is now informing and advising the third party tenants that the trustees of the plaintiff are not entitled to receive the rentals and that only he, the defendant, Daniel Boone, is entitled to receive them. This representation is false.

5. On information and belief, that if an injunction is not issued enjoining the defendant from further representing himself as being authorized to act on behalf of the plaintiff, he will continue to collect and hold the rentals to the plaintiff's great and irreparable damage. The defendant is insolvent and judgment-proof.

6. Since the defendant collected the $240, on information and belief, he has collected additional rental, the exact amount of which is unknown to the plaintiff. When the amount is ascertained, leave is requested to amend the complaint to show the amount thereof. An accounting is necessary to ascertain the true amount of rentals collected and now held by the defendant. The plaintiff has no speedy and adequate remedy at law.

The prayer is 1) for an injunction permanently enjoining the defendant from collecting or attempting to collect future rentals from the third party tenants and from interfering with the collections of such rentals by the authorized trustees of the plaintiff; 2) that the defendant be required to make and submit a true and correct accounting of all moneys which he has collected from the third party tenants under the terms of the lease and 'that upon such accounting having been taken, that a money judgment be rendered herein in favor of plaintiff and against said defendant in an amount which this court may find is due from said defendant to plaintiff herein'; 3) for general relief.

When the nature of the action vests jurisdiction in the municipal court, it may not be conferred on the superior court by failure of the parties to object thereto. Tennesen v. Prudential Ins. Co., 8 Cal.App.2d 160, 162, 47 P.2d 1066. A plaintiff cannot confer jurisdiction on the superior court by adding to a legitimate cause of action, properly within the jurisdiction of the municipal court, allegations of an imaginary cause of action falling within the jurisdiction of the superior court. Reardon v. Melbourne, 53 Cal.App.2d 257, 260, 127 P.2d 618. The form of action is immaterial if a cause of action is actually stated, the doctrine of 'theory of pleading' having been repudiated in this state. Campbell v. Veith, 121 Cal.App.2d 729, 732, 264 P.2d 141.

Generally if the action is substantially of an equitable as well as of a legal nature, the superior court is invested with jurisdiction to hear and determine the entire cause. Silverman v. Greenberg, 12 Cal.2d 252, 254, 83 P.2d 293. The statute conferring jurisdiction on municipal courts of demands below certain amounts does not forbid determination of such demands in the superior court where they are connected with a type of demand solely within the jurisdiction of the superior court. Kane v. Mendenhall, 5 Cal.2d 749, 756, 56 P.2d 498.

'The distinction between actions at law and suits in equity is largely one of the remedy, and yet it has often been used as a convenient reference line for separating the jurisdiction of one court from that of another. The original Municipal Court Act (St. 1925, p. 658, § 29, amended by St.1929, p. 838, § 2) used that line almost entirely for marking out the jurisdiction of municipal courts, confining them, in the main, to actions at law; and this use of it has been preserved, although with an increasing number of exceptions, in subsequent statutes, including section 89 of the Code of Civil Procedure which now regulates the matter. With the jurisdiction of a court limited to actions at law, it cannot be held that such court has jurisdiction of the case presented by a pleading in which a plaintiff seeks primarily equitable relief, and shows by appropriate allegations his right to that relief, even though on the same facts, or some of them, he might also obtain incidental relief at law. 1 C.J.S. [, Actions, § 54, pp.] 1161, 1162. However, the facts necessary here for the two kinds of relief sought are not identical.' Cook v. Winklepleck, 16 Cal.App.2d, Supp., 759, 766, 59 P.2d 463, 466. If an action is for an amount which is unliquidated and unascertained and which cannot be determined without an accounting, it is a suit in equity. Kritzer v. Lancaster, 96 Cal.App.2d 1, 6, 214 P.2d 407; Vail v. Pacific Fish Products Co., 76 Cal.App. 58, 78, 243 P. 869; 1 Cal.Jur.2d 414, § 77 et seq. If a complaint sets forth all the facts necessary for the calculation of an account between the parties, recovery may be had...