Title: Manor Baking Co. v. City of Topeka

State: kansas

Issuer: Kansas Supreme Court

Document:

170 Kan. 292 (1950)
225 P.2d 89
MANOR BAKING COMPANY, a corporation, Appellee,
v.
THE CITY OF TOPEKA, a municipal corporation; F.J. WARREN, Mayor; J. GLENN DAVIS, City Commissioner; HARRY C. SNYDER, City Commissioner; LLOYD B. SMITH, City Commissioner; C. MADISON WILLIAMS, City Commissioner; and FRANK P. ERESCH, City Attorney, Appellants.
No. 38,059

Supreme Court of Kansas.
Opinion filed December 9, 1950.
Frank P. Eresch, city attorney, and Peter F. Caldwell, assistant city attorney, argued the cause, and were on the briefs for appellants.
T.M. Lillard, of Topeka, argued the cause, and O.B. Eidson, Philip H. Lewis and James W. Porter, all of Topeka, and Frazor T. Edmondson, of Dallas, Texas, were with him on the briefs for appellee.
The opinion of the court was delivered by
PRICE, J.:
This appeal grows out of an attempt by the governing body of the city of Topeka to regulate the manner in which the Manor Baking Company (hereinafter referred to as plaintiff) is to operate and conduct its business in Topeka. Plaintiff's action, as originally brought, sought to declare the provisions of G.S. 1947 Supp. 12-2001, as amended by House bill 223 (being chapter 119, *293 Laws of 1949) unconstitutional and void as applied to the business of plaintiff in Topeka, and asked for an injunction permanently enjoining defendant city from interfering with the conduct of its business by reason of its failure to apply for or obtain a franchise or other grant or privilege in accordance with and upon the terms and conditions specified in such statute. The action was later expanded into one for a declaratory judgment construing the statute in question, as amended, as the same would apply to a business such as plaintiff's.
The parties entered into a written stipulation of facts which, briefly summarized or quoted, shows the following background of the present controversy:
Plaintiff is a Delaware corporation, with its address and principal place of business in Kansas City, Mo., and is duly licensed and authorized to transact business as a foreign corporation and to sue and be sued in the state of Kansas. It is engaged in the manufacture and sale of bread and other bakery products, and in January, 1949, applied to defendant city for a license authorizing it to conduct a retail store for the sale of bakery products and for authority to deliver in the city such products by its trucks from its salesroom in Topeka. Concurrently with its application it paid a license fee of $500, receiving the city treasurer's receipt therefor, and was advised by the license collector that no additional license was necessary in order to operate its store or trucks to be used by it in the delivery of its products in the city.
In February, 1949, plaintiff remodeled a building in defendant city in which location it has been conducting a retail store for the sale of its products and from which place its delivery trucks operate over various routes in the city, selling and delivering bakery goods to its customers. It has filed its tax returns with the proper local authorities covering its stock of goods, trucks and other personal property.
Paragraphs 6 to 13, inclusive, of the stipulation of facts are as follows:
*295 House bill 223, heretofore referred to, having been passed by the 1949 session of the legislature and approved by the governor, was to become effective June 30, 1949. On June 6, 1949, counsel for plaintiff addressed a letter to the legal department of defendant city making inquiry concerning the city's position with reference to its being necessary for plaintiff to obtain a franchise under the statute in question in order to continue the operation of its business within the city.
Shortly thereafter, in a letter from the city attorney, counsel for plaintiff was advised that if the ordinance contemplated was adopted by the governing body of defendant plaintiff would be subjected to its prohibition and that in order to carry on its business it would be necessary to obtain a franchise, and that any contract entered into would necessarily be by ordinance and subject to all of the provisions set forth in House bill 223.
This action was then commenced.
In the court below no oral evidence was introduced and the case was submitted on the files and written stipulation of facts. For its findings of fact the court adopted the written stipulation of facts, and rendered the following conclusions of law:
Judgment was entered in accordance with the foregoing conclusions. Defendant city's motion for a new trial being overruled, it has appealed, specifying as error each of the three conclusions of law rendered by the court.
Chapter 119, Laws of 1949, being quite lengthy, will not be quoted in full, but is incorporated herein by reference. The first paragraph of section 1 of the act reads:
The italicized portion above quoted is the 1949 amendment. In all other respects the entire act is identical with G.S. 1947 Supp. 12-2001 and 12-2002.
In addition to the above, the act provides that all contracts granting any such original franchise, right or privilege, shall be by ordinance and not otherwise; that no contract, grant, right, privilege or franchise shall be extended for any longer period of time than twenty years from the date of such grant or extension; that the city may fix a reasonable schedule of maximum rates to be charged by the franchise-holder for the sale of its services; that the city may impose fixed charges as a condition for the granting of such franchise, which may consist of a percentage of the gross receipts derived from the service permitted by the franchise, with the duty on the part of the franchise-holder to report at six-month periods to the city all gross receipts collected during such period and to pay into the treasury of the city the percentage thereof fixed by the ordinance; and that such franchise grant is in no event to be effective until sixty days after the franchise ordinance has been published for three consecutive weeks, the franchise to be subject to annulment by vote of a majority of electors voting in a special election to be held at the expense of the franchise applicant in the event such special election is petitioned for during such sixty-day period by twenty percent of the legally qualified voters of the city who voted for mayor at the last preceding city election.
Plaintiff frankly concedes that such terms and conditions are valid and proper in franchise ordinances pertaining to public utilities, but that as applied to a business strictly private in nature, such as is contended we have here, would impose upon it such unreasonable *297 obligations and restrictions as to be unconstitutional and void. A major portion of the briefs of both parties is devoted to a discussion of this phase of the question, but, for our purposes and in order to reach a proper decision, we do not deem it necessary to go into the precise question in detail.
In numerous decisions of this court it has been uniformly held that G.S. 1947 Supp. 12-2001 (and its predecessors) has application only to public utility franchises and that it covers a sphere of municipal authority entirely separate and distinct from ordinances licensing and regulating private users of the streets. (O'Neal v. Harrison, 96 Kan. 339, 343, 150 Pac. 551, L.R.A. 1915F 1069; State, ex rel., v. City of Coffeyville, 138 Kan. 909, 912, 28 P.2d 1032; Peoples Taxicab Co. v. City of Wichita, 140 Kan. 129, 137, 34 P.2d 545, 95 A.L.R. 1218; Home Cab Co. v. City of Wichita, 140 Kan. 451, 36 P.2d 1012; City of Wichita v. Home Cab Co., 141 Kan. 697, 700, 42 P.2d 972.)
Such being the case, what then is the effect of the 1949 amendment? Both before and after (the amendment) subdivision seventh of the act reads:
In State, ex rel., v. City of Coffeyville, supra, in construing this provision, it was said:
We again quote the amendment, it being in the first paragraph of the act:
The city contends that by virtue of the amendment the statute is *298 no longer limited in application to public utilities and that its scope is now clearly extended so as to include any business which is not prohibited by law.
On the other hand, plaintiff argues that the language of the amendment is no broader than subdivision seventh of the act, above quoted; that the amendment really added nothing, and that while the language of such provision (seventh) was broad enough to require that all rights and privileges for the use of the streets must be by ordinance and must be subject to all of the conditions named in the statute, the sense of such subdivision must, to avoid absurdity, be held to embrace only those persons or corporations engaged in public utility business.
And so we have this situation: If the 1949 amendment be held not to have added anything to the statute as it formerly existed, then there should be no interference with plaintiff's private business by reason of its failure to comply with a statute having application only to public utilities. On the other hand, if the city's contention, that by virtue of the amendment the statute is no longer limited in application to public utilities and that its language clearly extends the scope of the statute to include the power to grant the privilege of using the streets in conducting lawful private business such as plaintiff's, be correct, then we are at once confronted with the provision of section 16 of article 2 of the state constitution, which provides that:
The title of the amended statute, chapter 119, Laws of 1949, reads:
We find nothing in the title to suggest that with the passage of the bill there was combined in the one statute the old field of public utility franchises with a new field granting to cities the power to grant the privilege to use the streets in conducting any lawful private business, such as we have here. The amendment, if given the force and effect contended for by the city, clearly would be outside of and foreign to the title of the bill, thus rendering the act unconstitutional and void.
In either event plaintiff would be entitled to the relief prayed for and which was granted by the lower court, and its judgment is therefore affirmed.