Source: https://caselaw.findlaw.com/ca-court-of-appeal/1492439.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-26 17:06:33+00:00

Document:
Mary BUTLER et al., Plaintiffs, Respondents and Cross-Appellants, v. CITY OF PALOS VERDES ESTATES et al., Defendants, Appellants and Cross-Respondents.
Kutak Rock, Edwin J. Richards, Paul F. Donsbach, Irvine, Andrew G. Davis, Omaha, NE and Jennifer L. Andrews, Irvine, for Defendants, Appellants and Cross-Respondents. Law Offices of Acciani & Acciani, Robert D. Acciani, Torrance and Dorothy E. Acciani for Plaintiffs, Respondents and Cross-Appellants. Cochran, Davis & Associates, Joan E. Cochran, Margret G. Parke, Palos Verdes Estates and Aya J. Pearson, Pasadena, for Friends of the Peacocks, as Amicus Curiae on behalf of Defendants, Appellants and Cross-Respondents.
A municipality maintained a program to manage the size of a feral peafowl population that inhabited parklands and canyon property owned by the municipality. Residents who opposed the presence of peafowl in the municipality sought to enjoin the peafowl management program, which permitted a minimum peafowl population, on the ground that the program violated restrictions in deeds by which the municipality obtained title to the parkland and canyon property. The trial court granted the relief and enjoined the municipality from allowing peafowl to use the parklands and canyons.
We conclude that because the peafowl which inhabit the parklands and canyons are feral rather than domesticated creatures, they are not instrumentalities of the municipality. As a result, the peafowl management program does not violate the deed restrictions under which title to the parklands and canyons was taken.
This dispute concerns the presence of peafowl in the City of Palos Verdes Estates. Peafowl are not indigenous to the Americas. Decades ago, a mayor of the City brought six or eight peafowl to his home located in the Espinosa Circle area and maintained them in a pen behind his home. After the mayor's death, his family released the peafowl into the wild in 1965. Since that time, the proliferation of free-roaming feral peafowl has precipitated serious differences of opinion among property owners in the City. Some residents view the peafowl as a nuisance without parallel, while others view them as a desirable part of the City's distinctive rural heritage.
In response to complaints from residents, the City developed a plan to trap and remove some of the feral peafowl. Fearing the peafowl would be decimated under the plan, the Friends of the Peacocks sued the City. In the wake of that lawsuit, the City in early 1986 adopted a peafowl management program, following which the Friends of the Peacocks dismissed their lawsuit.
Under the peafowl management program, the City conducts a periodic census of the peafowl population in two parkland areas-Espinosa Circle and Malaga Cove-historically inhabited by the peafowl. The program requires that the City maintain a minimum flock of 21 birds in each of the two areas. Peafowl in excess of that number may be trapped and relocated outside the City. After the peafowl are trapped, the City keeps them in a holding pen until they can be relocated. Under the program, the City conducted major trapping programs in 1986, 1993-1994, and 2001, and trapped at least 50 peafowl in 2001.
After the City's 2001 trapping program, residents' complaints concerning the peafowl continued, and one peafowl antagonist removed four or five additional birds on her own. According to the City manager, several peafowl had been poisoned and killed; the City was “getting perilously close to the minimum number” of birds; and peafowl lovers were threatening to import peafowl to maintain the minimum number. As a consequence, on July 10, 2001 the City Council unanimously enacted an ordinance making it a misdemeanor for anyone, other than a City employee, to trap or transport peafowl in the City.
• The City did not request permission from the Homes Association to keep peafowl on its property.
The court found that the City “is engaged in all of the foregoing means of ‘ranging,’ ” and further had enacted an ordinance “preventing citizens from interfering with the ranging peafowl.” Consequently, the City was “keeping” peafowl on its property in violation of the deed restrictions.
• The deed restrictions authorize the Homes Association to grant permission to any property owner to keep animals, rabbits or poultry.
• Peafowl have been an integral part of the community and its history and culture for the past 80 years.
After the trial court issued its statement of decision and entered judgment, the City moved for a new trial. The court granted the motion and conducted a bench trial as to whether the City received valid written permission from the Homes Association, by virtue of Resolution 151, to keep peafowl on City property under the peafowl management program. The court found the Board lacked authority to pass Resolution 151 because it did not act “under uniform regulations” as required in the deed restrictions. The basis for this finding was that Resolution 151 does not apply to all owners of land subject to the deed restrictions, but rather “grants the permission to only one land owner, the City, and not to the other owners of land subject to the [deed restrictions].” Therefore, “no legally permissible permission” was given to the City.
Judgment was entered on July 12, 2004. The City filed a timely appeal, and Butler cross-appealed from Commission Mitchell's ruling sustaining the City's demurrer to the causes of action for inverse condemnation, nuisance, trespass, negligence and emotional distress.
We conclude the trial court erred as a matter of law in determining that the deed restrictions operated to prevent the City from continuing to conduct its nearly 20-year-old peafowl management program. Two points, particularly in combination, compel reversal. One is deference to the elected bodies that together govern Palos Verdes Estates-the elected city officials and the elected board of the Homes Association. The former initiated the peafowl management program years ago, as a compromise between residents of opposing views, and the latter endorses that program. Of course, the inability to defer to elected bodies that operate in violation of legal restrictions brings us to the second and more important point. The deed restriction at issue is a matter of contract, and words of a contract are to be understood in their ordinary and popular sense. (Civ.Code, § 1644; see also Code Civ. Proc., § 1861.) The trial court eschewed the “ordinary and popular sense” of the words. Instead it relied upon expert testimony to reach the conclusion that the City is “keeping” peafowl on its property, within the meaning of the deed restrictions, by “ranging” them. In relying on the technical rather than the usual sense of “keeping” animals or birds, the court erred, and its error is manifest on a number of bases.
First, we do not doubt Bradley's opinion that it is possible to keep a flock of domesticated fowl by “ranging” them, as Bradley described, just as cattle ranchers range cattle and free-range chicken farmers range chickens. However, persons who range livestock-whether cattle, chickens or peacocks-at least purport to own or possess the livestock they are ranging. The City neither owns nor possesses the Palos Verdes Estates peafowl, whose ancestors were released into the wild decades ago by private parties.
In sum, the words of the Palos Verdes Estates deed restrictions, like those of other contracts, must be understood in their ordinary and popular sense. (Civ.Code, § 1644; 1 Witkin, Summary of Cal. Law (10th ed. 2005) Contracts, § 745, pp. 833-834 (citing cases); see also Code Civ. Proc., § 1861 [“terms of a writing are presumed to have been used in their primary and general acceptation”].) The restriction stating that “[n]o cattle, hogs, or other animals, rabbits or poultry, may be kept” on one's property, construed in its ordinary and popular sense, means that the City, like any other property owner, may not raise peafowl on its property. The restriction cannot be understood to mean that the City may not count, trap and remove feral peafowl and otherwise act in accordance with its peafowl management program. The program is endorsed by the elected Homes Association, whose interpretation of “any and all” deed restrictions is described in the declaration of those restrictions as “final and conclusive.” 6 The trial court erred in concluding otherwise.
In her cross-appeal, Butler argues that the trial court should have overruled, rather than sustained, the City's demurrer to her causes of action for inverse condemnation, trespass, nuisance, negligence, and emotional distress. Butler contends the court erred in concluding the peafowl were not instrumentalities of the City, and asserts the question is one of fact, not of law, and cannot be decided on demurrer. We disagree. The court clearly and correctly concluded that, based on the facts alleged in the complaint, the peafowl were not instrumentalities of the City as a matter of law.
Butler complains of the trial court's “misguided focus on the word ‘feral,’ ” and contends that the “finding that ‘feral’ means ‘wild,’ as in ‘wild animal’ ․ is error.” Nothing is misguided in the trial court's analysis. In fact, “feral” does mean “wild,” as any dictionary will confirm. Moreover, for the purposes of determining whether a creature is an instrumentality of the government, no meaningful distinction may be drawn between a “wild” animal that cannot be domesticated and a “feral” animal that has “escaped from domestication and become wild․” (Webster's 3d New Internat. Dict., supra, at p. 838.) Neither may be considered an instrumentality of the state unless reduced to possession. Accordingly, the trial court did not err in concluding, based on the facts alleged in Butler's complaint, that the peafowl were not instrumentalities of the City as a matter of law.
The judgment is reversed. The City is to recover its costs on appeal.
1. The trial court also sustained the demurrer, without leave to amend, as to the causes of action for declaratory and injunctive relief against the individual defendants.
2. The trial court granted the City summary adjudication of Butler's causes of action seeking relief from the ordinance prohibiting the trapping of peafowl. The court found the ordinance was a valid exercise of the City's police powers. That ruling is not contested.
4. Butler points to Bradley's testimony that neither the Department of Fish and Game nor the Department of Agriculture considers peafowl as wildlife, and also observes that the Fish & Game Code defines “wild animal” as “any animal of the class Aves (birds) ․ which is not normally domesticated in this state as determined by the commission.” (Fish & G.Code, § 2116 [defining the term “wild animal” as used in the Code's chapter on the importation, transportation, and sheltering of restricted live wild animals].) However, whether peafowl are regulated by the Department of Fish and Game, or precisely how they are classified, is immaterial to the question whether the City is “keeping” them on its property. Moreover, the Fish & Game Code also defines “wildlife,” as used in the Code's chapter on conservation of wildlife resources, to mean “birds, mammals, and reptiles not raised in captivity” (Fish & G.Code, § 1800), and the Palos Verdes Estate peafowl clearly were not “raised in captivity.” Again, we do not doubt that the deed restrictions would prevent a property owner in Palos Verdes Estates from raising peafowl on his or her property. That, however, is not what the City is doing.
5. This opinion does not address the City's contention that its legitimate exercise of police powers overrides the deed restriction. We conclude only that the City is not keeping peafowl on its property within the meaning of the restriction.
6. Our conclusion makes it unnecessary to address the City's contentions that the Homes Association is an indispensable party to this litigation and that the injunction entered by the trial court is vague and unenforceable.
We concur: RUBIN, Acting P.J., and FLIER, J.

References: v. 
 § 1644
 § 1861
 § 1644
 § 745
 § 1861
 § 2116
 § 1800