Opinion ID: 1305042
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The city has failed to comply with the terms of the memorandum of understanding.

Text: (2a) Defendants challenge the trial court's finding that the city did not comply with the terms of the agreement. We have pointed out that the trial judge found the agreement uncertain in meaning and admitted parol evidence to aid in its construction. Defendants do not contend that the evidence received was inadmissible under the parol evidence rule, [12] nor that the evidence so admitted does not support the findings and conclusions of the trial court. Instead, the defendants argue first, that the city singularly enjoys a unilateral right to insist upon any reasonable interpretation of the agreement that it chooses, and second, that the agreement can properly be interpreted to require only the taking of a salary survey, leaving the fixing of salary ranges to later administrative determination. The city's claim to a unilateral right to interpret the memorandum rests upon numerous cases holding that a city wage ordinance will not be held to conflict with charter provisions requiring payment of prevailing wages unless the city's action is `so palpably unreasonable and arbitrary as to indicate an abuse of discretion as a matter of law.' ( Sanders v. City of Los Angeles (1970) 3 Cal.3d 252, 261 [90 Cal. Rptr. 169, 475 P.2d 201]; Walker v. County of Los Angeles (1961) 55 Cal.2d 626, 639 [12 Cal. Rptr. 671, 361 P.2d 247]; City & County of S.F. v. Boyd (1943) 22 Cal.2d 685, 690 [140 P.2d 666].) [13] The city seeks to apply this doctrine to the present case; it argues that in enacting Salary Ordinance No. 3936 it attempted to comply with its duty under the memorandum, and that this ordinance cannot be set aside unless it is fraudulent or palpably unreasonable. This argument, however, misses the point; the issue here is not the validity of Ordinance No. 3936, but the sufficiency of that ordinance to fulfill the city's duty under the memorandum. Although the cited cases recognize the broad discretion of a city in interpreting its respective charter's prevailing wage provisions, and although defendant city here would analogize the instant issue with such a prevailing wage case, defendant's position founders on the rock of the bilateral nature of the instant memorandum of understanding. We do not probe the city's interpretation and application of a prevailing wage ordinance or even an alleged abuse of discretion by the city in so applying it; we deal here with a mutually agreed covenant, a labor management contract. We know of no case that holds that one party can impose his own interpretation upon a two-party labor-management contract. In pre-Wagner Act days some courts considered collective bargaining agreements to be merely statements of intention or unilateral memoranda. (See Chamberlain, Collective Bargaining and the Concept of Contract (1948) 48 Colum.L.Rev. 829, 832; Annot. (1935) 95 A.L.R. 10, 34-37.) But all modern California decisions treat labor-management agreements whether in public employment [14] or private [15] as enforceable contracts (see Lab. Code, § 1126) which should be interpreted to execute the mutual intent and purpose of the parties. [16] This principle applies as much to agreements between government employees and their employers as to private collective bargaining agreements. [17] Agreements reached under the Meyers-Milias-Brown Act, like their private counterparts, are the product of negotiation and concession; they can serve as effective instruments for the promotion of good labor-management relations only if interpreted and performed in a manner consistent with the objectives and expectations of the parties. The city raises many other objections to the trial court's interpretation of the agreement: it contends that the memorandum gave the council discretion to choose whether to implement the survey findings; that the memorandum is but an agreement to agree in the future concerning new salary ranges; that the term average salaries in the memorandum does not mean an arithmetic average but refers to the city's practice of using bar graphs to visualize an average salary level; that the phrase proper consideration [for] internal alignments and traditional relationships in the memorandum authorizes the city to use such alignments and relationships to justify payment of below average salaries. (3) All the above contentions violate the established rule that if the construction of a document turns on the resolution of conflicting extrinsic evidence, the trial court's interpretation will be followed if supported by substantial evidence. (See 6 Witkin, Cal. Procedure (2d ed. 1971) pp. 4248-4249 and cases there cited.) (2b) In light of this rule, defendants, in order to overturn the trial court's interpretation, must demonstrate either that the extrinsic evidence on which the court relied conflicts with any interpretation to which the instrument is reasonably susceptible ( Pacific Gas & E. Co. v. G.W. Thomas Drayage etc. Co., supra, 69 Cal.2d 33, 40) or that such evidence does not provide substantial support for the court's interpretation. But defendants present neither contention. Their arguments, based upon an interpretation of the memorandum on its face without reference to the extrinsic evidence or the trial court's findings, pose no issue cognizable within the scope of our appellate review.