Trailway Oil Co. v. City of Mobile, 1 Div. 792

• Decision Date: 14 January 1960
• Docket Number: 1 Div. 792
• Citation: 122 So.2d 757,271 Ala. 218
• Parties: TRAILWAY OIL COMPANY et al. v. CITY OF MOBILE.
• Court: Alabama Supreme Court

Page 757

122 So.2d 757

271 Ala. 218

TRAILWAY OIL COMPANY et al. v. CITY OF MOBILE.

1 Div. 792.

Supreme Court of Alabama.

Jan. 14, 1960.

Rehearing Denied Sept. 15, 1960.

Caffey, Gallalee & Caffey, Mobile, for appellants.

Fred G. Collins, Mobile, for appellee.

Beebe & Swearingen, Bay Minett, for Baldwin County, amicus curiae.

SIMPSON, Justice.

This appeal is from a decree of the Circuit Court in Equity of Mobile County, holding Act No. 80, Acts of Alabama 1956, Vol. 1, p. 115, unconstitutional as in violation of §§ 104(18) and 106 of the Alabama Constitution of 1901.

The operative provision of the act in question reads as follows:

'Section 1. That no municipality whose corporate limits do not lie within or extend into and embrace and include a portion of Baldwin County shall have or exercise police jurisdiction within Baldwin County; nor shall any such municipality exercise police jurisdiction, police powers or taxing powers within Baldwin County or over or on any person in Baldwin County or property or business or trade or profession in Baldwin County; nor shall any such municipality levy, fix or collect any license or fee of any kind on or for the exercise of any business, trade or profession done in Baldwin County; nor shall any ordinance of any such municipality enforcing police or sanitation regulations or prescribing fines or penalties for violation thereof have force or effect in Baldwin County.'

This action originated in a bill for a declaratory judgment filed by complainants, now appellants, against the City of Mobile. The complainants were Trailway Oil Company, Inc. and Hurricane Oil Company, Inc., Alabama corporations, and James W. Rountree, who each operated, at the time of the filing of this suit, a business establishment in Baldwin County, Alabama, on the Mobile Bay Causeway on United States Highway 90, outside the corporate limits of the City of Mobile, but within three miles thereof. The Mobile corporate limits do not lie within, or extend into, or embrace or include any portion of Baldwin County. The bill alleged a justiciable controversy existing between the complainants and the respondent in regard to the validity of said act of the Legislature, and it prayed that the court might declare the act valid and enjoin the respondent from exercising any police jurisdiction in Baldwin County.

The respondent City of Mobile contested the constitutionality of the act on the ground that it violated §§ 104(18), 105, 106, and 108 of the Constitution of Alabama of 1901, and the equal protection provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

After submission of the case on the pleading and an agreed statement of facts, the lower court decreed that the act in question did not violate any provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment of the federal Constitution or §§ 105 or 108 of the state Constitution, but that, and we quote from the decree:

'5. The said Act is violative of Subsection 18 of Section 104 of the Constitution of Alabama of 1901 in that, contrary to the express terms thereof, said Act is a local law, introduced and enacted as such, amendatory of the charter of a municipal corporation with particular relation to the charter powers of a municipal corporation vested by virtue of the provisions of Sections 9 and 733 of Title 37 of the Code of Alabama of 1940, as amended.

'6. The said Act is violative of Section 106 of the Constitution of Alabama of 1901 in that, contrary to the express terms thereof, said Act is a local law affecting matters or things situated outside Baldwin County and specifically towit in Mobile County, but which Act was advertised, introduced and enacted as a local law relating only to Baldwin County and in which Baldwin County only was notice published of the intention to apply for its passage, as required by this said Constitutional section.'

The court, therefore, declared against the claims in the bill of complaint and denied complainants the injunctive relief sought and taxed the costs against them.

At the outset it is expedient for us to point out that there is nothing before this court for review as to the correctness of the lower court's holding that the act under attack was inoffensive to the Fourteenth Amendment of the federal Constitution, or Sections 105 or 108 of the state Constitution. Those matters, of course, would be for appellee to raise, if so desired, appropriately by cross-appeal or cross-assignments of error, which it did not do. Ford Motor Co. v. Hall Auto Co., 226 Ala. 385, 147 So. 603; Roach v. Olive, 208 Ala. 612, 95 So. 23.

Appellant's assignments of error have properly raised for decision on this appeal whether the decree below was infected with error in declaring said Act No. 80 infractive of Sections 104 and 106 of our Constitution.

Preliminary to addressing ourselves to these questions it is proper to observe that the act under consideration is conceded to be a local act. It is also without dispute that county lines, rivers, and bodies of water constitute no barrier to the exercise of police powers over areas within the general police jurisdiction of a municipality. City of Birmingham v. Lake, 243 Ala. 367, 10 So.2d 24; White v. City of Decatur, 225 Ala. 646, 144 So. 873, 86 A.L.R. 914. As we see it, the question here to be resolved, in essence, is: Can the Legislature by local act pertaining to Baldwin County limit the exercise of police powers by municipalities to those cities or towns which are located within Baldwin County? Our conclusion compels an answer in the affirmative. This answer results from an approach to the case which regards the act in question as territorial only in effect, merely restricting the police jurisdiction of the City of Mobile in area, but not subjectively. We shall advert later to this point.

It is a fundamental principle of canonical construction, oft referred to, that all presumptions and intendments are indulged in favor of the validity of a statute, it being the recognized duty of the court to sustain an act unless convinced beyond a reasonable doubt of its unconstitutionality. Newton v. City of Tuscaloosa, 251 Ala. 209, 36 So.2d 487; Yeilding v. State ex rel. Wilkinson, 232 Ala. 292, 167 So. 580; State ex rel. Brooks v. Gullatt, 210 Ala. 452, 98 So. 373; City of Ensley v. Simpson, 166 Ala. 366, 52 So. 61. Or as stated in the City of Ensley v. Simpson case, supra, before an act of the legislature can be declared unconstitutional, it must clearly and unavoidably appear to have been without the power of the legislature.

It is well settled that the power of the legislature, except as restrained by the Constitution, is supreme in the enactment of statutory law, in the creation of subordinate governmental agencies, in prescribing their powers and duties, and it has plenary power to deal with such subordinate agencies of the state as counties and municipal corporations. White v. City of Decatur, supra; State ex rel. Brooks v. Gullatt, supra; Young Women's Christian Ass'n of Plainfield, N. J. v. Gunter, 230 Ala. 521, 162 So. 120.

Full treatment of the question of legislative control over municipal corporations is given in the case of Yeilding v. State ex rel. Wilkinson, supra. The principle there stated is to the effect that a municipal corporation is a political creature, and the creature cannot be greater than its creator. Counties and cities are political subdivisions of the state, each created by the sovereign power of the state, in accordance with the sovereign will, and each exercising such power, and only such power, as is conferred upon it by law. Each being a creature of the statute, the same power which can create, can abolish. See also State ex rel. Wilkinson v. Lane, 181 Ala. 646, 62 So. 31, 34; State ex rel. Britton v. Harris, 259 Ala. 368, 67 So.2d 26; City of Ensley v. Simpson, supra; State ex rel. Brooks v. Gullatt, supra. Municipal powers may be enlarged, abridged or entirely withdrawn at the legislative pleasure. State ex rel. Britton v. Harris, supra; City of Ensley v. Simpson, supra.

Section 106 of the Alabama Constitution of 1901 provides as follows:

'No special, private, or local law shall be passed on any subject not enumerated in section 104 of this constitution, except in reference to fixing the time of holding courts, unless notice of the intention to apply therefor shall have been published, without cost to the state, in the county or counties where the matter or thing to be affected may be situated, * * *. The courts shall pronounce void every special, private, or local law which the journals do not affirmatively show was passed in accordance with the provisions of this section.'

One of the contentions of the appellee is that the act under attack contravenes the provisions of this section, in that the act was advertised, introduced, and enacted as a local law relating only to Baldwin County and in which county only was notice published of the intention to apply for its passage, but that, in fact, the law affected matters situated outside Baldwin County and specifically in Mobile County. While analyzing this contention against the validity of the subject act, a sensible construction must be given to the act and any general terms used in the statute should be so limited in their application as not to lead to an absurd consequence. Ex parte Rowe, 4 Ala.App. 254, 59 So. 69.

We have carefully reviewed the provisions of the local act and the construction that we place thereon is that its only effectiveness is within the boundaries of Baldwin County and that it does not affect anything, municipality or otherwise, lying outside the limits of Baldwin County, except in so far as a part of the police jurisdiction of the City of Mobile, whose corporate limits do not lie within or extend into and embrace and include a portion of Baldwin County, lies within that county. The sole manner in which this act can affect the City of Mobile, or any other city...