Title: SCHMIDT v. City of Cornelius

State: oregon

Issuer: Oregon Supreme Court

Document:

Affirmed October 16, 1957.
*507 Mervin W. Brink, of Hillsboro, argued the cause for appellants. With him on the brief were Schwenn & Brink, of Hillsboro.
James R. Shick, of Forest Grove, argued the cause and filed a brief for respondent.
Before PERRY, Chief Justice, and ROSSMAN, LUSK, BRAND, WARNER and KESTER, Justices.
AFFIRMED.
BRAND, J.
Plaintiffs above named are the owners of contiguous tracts of land lying within the city of Cornelius. Acting in reliance upon the provisions of ORS 222.810 they brought this proceeding seeking to have the lands owned by them and described in the complaint excluded from the boundaries of the city. The defendant city demurred to the complaint. We find no order thereon on the judgment roll, but the printed abstract states that it was overruled. The case was put at issue by answers and reply, and after trial of the issues by the court, the "suit" was dismissed with prejudice. Plaintiffs appeal. The complaint alleges:
Then follows a legal description giving only the perimeter boundary of the land which plaintiffs seek to have taken out of the boundaries of the city. The prayer is "for a judgment, disconnecting the hereinabove described real property from the City of Cornelius * * *." By answer the corporate existence of the city is admitted. Then follows a general denial. The answer contains four separate defenses.
1. By the first affirmative defense it is alleged that the statute upon which plaintiffs rely is unconstitutional in that it contravenes the provisions of Oregon Constitution, Article XI, Section 2. This contention was amplified by the demurrer to the complaint wherein it was contended:
Defendant also alleges that all of the plaintiffs have separate ownerships of the property within the perimeter description and that each of said ownership is less than 20 acres in size within the corporate limits *509 of the city, with the exception of a tract owned by Gilbert E. Mooberry and Byron Mooberry. It appears to be admitted that the Mooberry tract exceeds 20 acres and that all of the other ownerships are less than 20 acres in size.
The statutes provide:
Assuming the constitutionality of the statutes, the question immediately arises whether any owner of less than 20 acres has a right to join with other like contiguous owners, adding their respective holdings, in order to comply with the 20-acre requirement. Under the clear wording of the statute we hold that no owner can invoke the statute unless the tract which he owns contains 20 or more acres. The Mooberry brothers did own a tract in excess of 20 acres and were entitled to seek relief under the statute if valid. No other plaintiff was so entitled. Whether two contiguous ownerships, each of which equals or exceeds 20 acres in size, have such a common interest as to permit the owners to join in one proceeding, is not before us and need not be decided. Nor is it necessary for us to decide whether the statute contemplates the bringing of an action at law or a suit in equity for the desired relief. The statute fails to specify whether this special proceeding is to be deemed one in law or in equity. The plaintiffs asked for a judgment, but the trial court treated the case as one in equity and entered a decree. There is no bill of exceptions. We have before us only the two issues above mentioned, i.e., the constitutionality of the statute and the question as to the qualifications of the parties plaintiff to seek relief. Even if the proceeding *511 be considered one at law, these questions would be before us without a bill of exceptions.
Treating the Mooberrys as sole plaintiffs, we turn to the constitutional question. Until now, no case involving the right of an owner to "disconnect" from a city has reached this court, or, so far as we know, any circuit court of this state. The constitutional provisions with which we are concerned are the following:
For the purposes of this case it is of particular importance that the constitutional provisions and especially Article IV § 1a, and Article XI, § 2 be read and construed together. Spence v. Watson, 182 Or at 237, 186 P2d 785; State ex rel North Bend, 171 Or 329, 337, 137 P2d 607; Burton v. Gibbons, 148 Or 370, 374, 36 P2d 786; Rose v. Port of Portland, 82 Or 541, 548, 162 P 498; State v. Port of Astoria, 79 Or 1, 10, 154 P 399. The problem before us is peculiar to the state of Oregon by reason of the unique provisions of our constitution concerning home rule of cities. We have been cited to many cases from other jurisdictions and have given to them serious consideration, but they must in each instance be considered with caution because of the difference in the fundamental law of the various states.
2. The statute purports to give the right to be disconnected from a city only to one whose land is within the boundary of a city of 2,000 inhabitants or less. The first question presented by the briefs is whether this classification of the rights of land owners on the basis of municipal population is arbitrary and capricious and therefore invalid. As said in Thompson v. Dickson, 202 Or 394, 403, 275 P2d 749:
*513 However, the power to classify cities for the purpose of general legislation is subject to limitations. In Foeller v. Housing Authority of Portland, 198 Or 205, 256 P2d 752, we said at 259, "Classification of cities upon the basis of their population is not improper if their difference in size has a reasonable bearing upon their needs and the conditions to which a legislator should give heed." Citing cases. The rule is affirmatively stated in Thompson v. Dickson, supra. Quoting with approval from Ladd v. Holmes, 40 Or 167, 66 P 714, the court said:
In discussing the propriety of legislative classification on the basis of population, the Supreme Court of New Jersey said:
See also State ex rel. Fatzer v. Redevelopment Authority of Kansas City, 176 Kan 145, 269 P2d 484.
Under the authorities cited the questions are *514 whether, in resorting to classification, the legislature was seeking to accomplish a legitimate public purpose and whether there was "in some reasonable degree" a practical and real basis for this legislation which purports to grant to a land owner the right to have his property disconnected from a city having a population of 2,000 or less but which gives no such right to another in exactly the same circumstances except that his property is within a city of more than 2,000 population.
3, 4. Another problem as to the validity of the classification relates to the provision of ORS 222.810 which accords to a landowner otherwise qualified, the right to disconnection if his 20 acres is "used principally for agricultural purposes." Must the court determine plaintiffs' rights on a percentage basis and find at least a 51 per cent agricultural use as against a possible 49 per cent residential or other use before ordering the disconnection? See Forsyth v. Village of Cookville, 356 Ill 289, 190 NE 421, where a similar but not identical statute was held unconstitutional. We have had great difficulty in finding any valid distinction which would justify the classifications found in the Oregon statute, but are confronted by the established rule that the burden is upon the party challenging the constitutionality of a law based upon classification of subject matter "to show beyond a reasonable doubt that the classification adopted is arbitrary and unreasonable and without any rational relationship to the end sought to be achieved." Thompson v. Dickson, supra. We also recognize that in classifying subjects for legislative treatment the courts will not question the legislative judgment unless they can say that the legislature "could not have had any reasonable grounds for believing that there were public considerations justifying the distinction made by the law." Thompson *515 v. Dickson, supra. Perhaps we have not probed to a sufficient depth the profundities of the legislative mind. We prefer therefore to base our decision on other considerations.
The defendant asserts that the statute attempts to provide a method of amending city charters, which method invades the prerogatives of local self-government reserved to the cities by the constitution.
5, 6. We first observe that the fixing of municipal boundaries is generally considered to be a legislative and not a judicial function. McQuillin, Municipal Corporations, 3d Ed, Vol 2, § 7.03, p 456. Assuming that the classification of cities by population is in this case valid, we find that the plaintiffs Mooberry must rely upon a tripartite procedure in asserting the right to have their land disconnected from the city. The three stages are as follows: (1) A statute, general in form, which purports to give rights to any owner whose land lies in any city having a population not exceeding 2,000, if his land qualifies under the four subparagraphs of ORS 222.810; (2) a right given to any such landowner at his election to bring or refrain from bringing an action for the disconnection of his land from the city; (3) an imperative duty of a court, on proof of the qualifying facts, to enter a judgment disconnecting the land from the city. Plaintiffs make the too broad assertion that "The power to amend city charters is vested in the legislature, qualified only by the provisions of Art XI, § 2 of the Oregon Constitution prohibiting enactment of special legislation for a particular town, village or city." They cite Southern Pacific Co. v. Consolidated Freightways, 203 Or 657, 281 P2d 693. In that case the general proposition is stated as follows:
Of course, in the absence of constitutional limitation, state or federal, the legislature may enact any law, general or special. Marr v. Fisher, 182 Or 383, 187 P2d 966. As to the power of an Oregon legislature to enact laws amending city charters, we are concerned with the provisions of Oregon Constitution, Article I, § 20 (class legislation); Article III, § 1 (separation of powers); and with Article I, § 21; Article IV, § 1a, and Article XI, § 2, set forth supra.
We shall not review the conflict in the rulings of this court prior to decision of Rose v. Port of Portland, supra, and Lovejoy v. Portland, 95 Or 459, 188 P 207. Those decisions established the rule that the legislature may enact general laws concerning cities and towns, even to the extent of amending charters.
We will now take notice of the nature of the general laws affecting cities, which laws have been upheld. The cases fall into several groups. Typical of one group is Southern Pacific v. Consolidated Freightways, Inc., supra, 203 Or 657, 281 P2d 693. Here the legislature by a general law prohibited the exercise of specified powers by cities of a certain class. And see, City of Coos Bay v. Eagles Lodge, 179 Or 83, 170 P2d 389. In these cases there is no intervening action between the legislative enactment and the effective limitation on the powers of the city under charter or ordinance.
Another group of cases involves general legislation directly investing cities with extramural powers which they could not otherwise exercise. (See State v. Port of Astoria, supra, re extramural authority.) Within *517 this group are Spence v. Watson, supra, 182 Or at 233, 186 P2d 785; Churchill v. Grants Pass, 70 Or 283, 141 P 164; City of McMinnville v. Howenstine, 56 Or 451, 109 P 81, and many others. Here the power is vested in a city and may be exercised by it simply by action of the city authorities. Other cases concerned general statutes not so clearly involving extramural powers but directly investing cities with specific powers, the exercise of which depends solely upon official action by the city without any intervening amendment of its charter by the voters of the city. Burton v. Gibbons, supra.
We will next consider cases in which legislative enactment, general in form, does not itself alter the powers of a city, but which establishes procedure by which some other official, tribunal or person is authorized to act and whose act, if taken, affects the powers of the city. These cases are unlike the ones previously discussed in that the authorized action is not by the city but some other person or body.
7, 8. This brings us to the disconnection cases. It is of course clear that a change in the boundaries of a city is an exercise of legislative power and amounts to an amendment of the city charter. 2 McQuillin, Municipal Corporations, § 7.03, p 258; Cooke v. Portland, 69 Or 572, 578, 139 P 1095. It is also to be remembered that although the enlargement of the city boundaries involves extramural power, the cities of Oregon, under Constitution Article IV, § 1a, and Article XI, § 2, may exercise their home rule powers and exclude territory previously included within their limits. Flavel Land Co. v. Leinenweber, 81 Or 353, 158 P 945. Thus the voters of a city have the identical power which the plaintiffs Mooberry are seeking to invoke in the pending case.
*518 From McQuillin's Municipal Corporations we quote the general rule, as follows:
9. It is obvious that statutes or constitutional provisions which authorize the city council, or other corporate authorities, or the qualified electors of a city, to detach property, are in a class by themselves. Such statutes are in aid of the home rule powers of cities, not in derogation of such powers. See Flavel Land Co. v. Leinenweber, supra. Statutes of some states authorize a different type of procedure for the detachment of property from a city. The statutory procedure is instituted by the filing of a petition by a landowner seeking disconnection of his property from the city. The city is made a defendant, and upon proof of the required facts, the court is required to enter judgment of disconnection. Plaintiff relies upon Punke v. Village of Elliott, 364 Ill 604, 5 NE2d 389. The Illinois statute was similar to ORS 222.810, supra. Plaintiff filed his petition for disconnection and the court held that the statute placed a mandatory duty upon the court to disconnect the land if the conditions prescribed by *519 statute were shown to exist. The statute was challenged as an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power to the courts, but it was held that since no discretion was given to the court, there was no delegation of legislative power. The statute was also upheld as against the charge that it constitutes local or special legislation. Other similar cases are cited in an annotation appearing in 117 ALR 267. And see, 2 McQuillin, Municipal Corporations, 3d Ed, § 7.26, p 331. All of these cases, however, must be considered in the light of the peculiar provisions of the Oregon Constitution.
Before applying those provisions to the facts of this case we will consider certain significant questions which have been raised in other states.
In Hastings v. Hansen, 44 Neb 704, 63 NW 34, the court said:
In City of Hutchinson v. Leimbach, 68 Kan 37, 74 P 598, the question at issue was whether plaintiff's land, which was previously within the boundaries of the city, had been legally disconnected therefrom. The statutory procedure called for the filing of a petition with the district court, followed by a hearing, and
*520 The court said:
It would appear on principle at least that those seeking disconnection by judicial procedure are confronted *521 by a dilemma. If the statute gives discretionary power to the court to determine the expediency of the disconnection, it is invalid as a delegation of legislative power to a court. If the court has a mandatory nondiscretionary duty on proof of the required facts, then "the will that the corporate boundaries shall be changed proceeds, not from the Legislature nor from the council, but from the signers of the petition * * *." Hutchinson v. Leimbach, supra.
In State ex rel. Jackson v. School District No. 2, 140 Kan 171, 34 P2d 102, the issue related to the constitutionality of an act of the legislature which provided that a property owner in any school district of designated size and character should have the right to file a petition with the county school superintendent to withdraw from the district. The court first indicated that the act was in form general but was in fact a special law "burlesqued" as a general one. The court then pointed out that upon the filing of a petition the statute purported to detach the land from the district. The detachment was not by act of the superintendent. The court said:
A case relating to the making of public improvements in a municipality rests upon similar reasoning. A statute provided that upon the filing of a petition by property owners representing a majority of the frontage *522 on a highway, specifying the kind, character and extent of a proposed improvement, the Board of Supervisors were required to make the improvement. The court said:
We have cited these cases for the reasoning found in them, and freely acknowledge that there are other decisions which support Punke v. Village of Elliott, supra. Among them are: In re Hunter, 104 Minn 378, 116 NW 922 (1908); Young v. Carey, 184 Ill 613, 56 NE 960 (1900); Tribett v. Village of Marcellus, 294 Mich 607, 293 NW 872 (1940). In Enderson v. Hildenbrand, 52 ND 533, 204 NW 356 (1925) some of the cases which we have cited were distinguished, and the court on full consideration upheld a disconnection statute as against the claim that it constituted a delegation of legislative power to private individuals. It was said that the "only thing delegated to petitioner is the right to petition" which is a constitutional right. It was said that it is competent for the legislature to *523 pass a law, the ultimate operation of which may by its own terms be made to depend on a contingency. In that case the contingency was the decision of a landowner at his option to file a petition for disconnection. The difficulty which we find in this reasoning is that the granting of the petition was by statute made mandatory upon proof of the required facts. Thus the voluntary act of the landowner was not merely an exercise of the right of petition but was in fact the thing which necessarily resulted in the disconnection. We think the fallacy of this reasoning is exposed in the concurring opinion of Chief Justice Hughes in Carter v. Carter Coal Co., which we will now consider.
In Considering the bearing of constitutional limitations upon the validity of the disconnection statute, we may well take our text from Carter v. Carter Coal Co., 298 US 238, 80 L Ed 1160. In that case the validity of the Bituminous Coal Conservation Act was in issue. The statute, in effect, delegated to the producers of more than two-thirds of the annual tonnage production of coal the power to fix maximum hours of labor and to bind the minority to compliance. The court said:
In a specially concurring opinion Chief Justice Hughes said:
In the recent case of General Electric Company v. Wahle, 207 Or 302, 296 P2d 635, this court held that the Fair Trade Act by permitting a trademark owner to fix prices by a contract with others so as to bind nonsigners of the contract was an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power. The court relied upon Van Winkle v. Fred Meyer, Inc., 151 Or 455, 460, 463, 49 P2d 1140, and La Forge v. Ellis, 175 Or 545, 154 P2d 844. These three cases establish the basic principle which is here involved. In a specially concurring *525 opinion in the General Electric case Mr. Justice LUSK said:
In Van Winkle v. Fred Meyer, supra, the price-fixing statute followed a procedure somewhat similar to that of the present "disconnection" statute. The requisite steps were (1) a general statute, (2) action by a majority of individuals, and (3) approval by the governor, based on findings of fact. In holding the act unconstitutional, we said:
In the case at bar the delegation is in a more obnoxious form than in the cases cited. The power to bring into effective life the dormant statute is not *526 delegated to a majority of private citizens but on the contrary is vested in any single private citizen who may invoke the act or not at his option. There is a difference, but not a valid distinction, between (1) the cases supra in which a group of private persons may invoke a statute general in form and thereby bind other private persons, and (2) a disconnection statute whereby a single private individual may invoke a statute general in form and thereby amend the charter of a city.
10. We have already seen that cities of Oregon are empowered by vote of the electorate to amend their charters by excluding territory. Flavel Land Co. v. Leinenweber, supra, and we have also held that the authority of a city to legislate relative to matters germane to purely municipal affairs "has been derived not from the legislature but from the constitution itself." City of Portland v. Welch, 154 Or 286, 59 P2d 228. Clearly, exclusion of territory from a city by act of the city is an exercise of municipal legislation under the decision of the case last cited.
We now construe Constitution Article XI, § 2, and Article IV, § 1a, together, as required by cases cited supra. Article XI, § 2 provides that the legislature shall not enact, amend, or repeal any charter for any city or town, and the legal voters are granted power to enact and amend their charters subject to the Constitution and criminal laws of the state. Article IV, § 1a in one respect goes beyond Article XI, § 2. It declares that the initiative and referendum powers are reserved to the legal voters of every municipality as to all local, special and municipal legislation of every character, and that cities and towns may provide for the manner of exercising such powers as to their municipal legislation.
*527 11. In the classic opinion of Justice HARRIS in Rose v. Port of Portland, supra, that distinguished jurist thought it important to point out that the ballot title for Article XI, § 2 as prepared by sponsors of the measure and as printed on the ballot was as follows: "`Constitutional amendment giving cities and towns exclusive power to enact and amend their charters.'" 82 Or 541 at 562. The ultimate question for decision is this: The legislature is powerless to enact a special law amending the charter of the city of Cornelius. Can it prescribe procedure whereby that power is vested solely in any private individual whose land qualifies under the statute and who may or may not exercise the power at his option? The question was answered by Chief Justice Hughes in the Carter case, supra, and has been answered by this court in City of Portland v. Welch, supra. The latter case involved the constitutionality of the Tax Supervising and Conservation Commission Act which provided that the decisions made by the Commission as to the amount of the tax which could be levied by each municipal corporation should be conclusive upon the levying boards and officers thereof. The validity of the act had been upheld in Tichner v. City of Portland, 101 Or 294, 200 P 466. Thereafter the city again challenged the constitutionality of the act as being in violation of Article XI, § 2 of the Oregon Constitution. The issue was reconsidered. This court said:
*528 Again we quote:
The court took pains to quote with approval from Burton v. Gibbons, 148 Or 370, 36 P2d 786, that
But the court qualified certain language which may be found in that case, by saying:
We said of this doctrine, which was also announced in Pearce v. Roseburg, 77 Or 195, 150 P 855:
We now adhere to the general rule as stated in In re Boalt, 123 Or 1, 260 P 1004:
Whether the legislature may ever by a general law operate directly upon all city charters in matters which concern alone the inhabitants of the respective cities and which relate to purely local affairs germane to the purposes for which the city was incorporated need not be again decided here. We merely take note of the apparent conflict between the dictum in Burton v. Gibbons (148 Or at 381) and the clear statement supra from City of Portland v. Welch.
12, 13. It is sufficient for the disposal of the pending question to hold that since the legislature could not pass a special law amending the charter of the city of Cornelius and excluding territory from its boundaries, "Hence, what the legislature can not do directly it can not do through indirection." City of Portland v. Welch, 154 Or at 295. We hold that the legislature could not, by an act general in form, effect an amendment to the charter of the city of Cornelius by empowering a private individual at his sole option to initiate a judicial proceeding which upon proof of specified facts would result in mandatory action by the court amending the city charter and excluding plaintiffs' territory from the city. To hold otherwise would be to deprive the city of its admitted power to change its own *530 boundaries by its own procedure, and would in practical effect violate the mandate of Constitution Article I, § 21 which provides that no law shall be passed "the taking effect of which shall be made to depend upon any authority, except as provided in this Constitution; * * *." Whatever may be the merit of cases like Punke v. Village of Elliott, supra, which arose in other states and were decided under other constitutional provisions, we must reject them as authority in this jurisdiction. To follow them would be to emasculate the Home Rule Provisions of our Constitution.
The decree of the trial court is affirmed.