Opinion ID: 1170215
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Effect of Civil Code Section 1007 on Prescriptive Claims Against Cities

Text: (15a) The trial court awarded prescriptive water rights against plaintiff to both city and private party defendants in the San Fernando and Sylmar basins. Plaintiff asserts that any prescription of its water rights by defendants was precluded by the 1935 amendment to section 1007 of the Civil Code which provided until 1968 that no possession by any person, firm or corporation no matter how long continued of any ... water right... or other property ... dedicated to or owned by any ... city ... shall ever ripen into any title, interest or right against such ... city. [66] Defendants argue that City of Pasadena v. City of Alhambra, supra, 33 Cal.2d 908, decided that the acquisition of water rights against cities by prescription was not barred by the 1935 amendment to Civil Code section 1007, which had been in effect for two years when the complaint in that action was filed. But this court did not reach the issue in that case. The City of Pasadena sued numerous users of water from the Raymond basin, including several cities, for an adjudication of ground water rights. All nondisclaiming parties except one stipulated to a judgment awarding prescriptive rights and allocating the water so as to restrict total production to the safe annual yield. The party which refused to stipulate to the judgment was California-Michigan Land and Water Company, a public utility. It was involuntarily included in the judgment after the trial court had heard its presentation of evidence and it was the sole appellant in this court. It could not and did not base any objection to an award of prescriptive rights against it upon the 1935 amendment to Civil Code section 1007 because the amendment did not apply to public utilities. [67] The city parties, on the other hand, had no reason to point to the inclusion of cities among the public entities whose rights the amendment protects against prescription because their objective of sustaining the judgment on appeal required that they waive any defenses they might otherwise have been able to assert. Moreover, the exclusion from this court's decision of any determination of the meaning or effect of the 1935 amendment to Civil Code section 1007 is demonstrated by the absence from the opinion of any mention of the statutory provision or any indication that its effect was put in issue or considered by the court. ( Meehan v. Hopps (1955) 45 Cal.2d 213, 217 [288 P.2d 267].) Contrary to defendants' contention, the Court of Appeal in California Water Service Co. v. Edward Sidebotham & Son, supra, 224 Cal. App.2d 715, did not rule on the question of whether the 1935 amendment to Civil Code section 1007 protects a city from having prescriptive rights awarded against it in ground basin litigation. [68] Nor are there any other appellate precedents on the issue. Defendants argue that the limitations placed by Civil Code section 1007 on the acquisition of prescriptive rights apply only to absolute prescription and not to mutual prescription in which the prescriptive water right is proportionately limited by the continued pumping and use of the water by the owners of the prior rights. Yet defendants correctly acknowledge that this court arrived at its decision in the Pasadena case by applying traditional principles of prescription. Moreover, the wording of the statutory restriction is not directed merely at absolute prescriptive rights. The statute declares that no possession by any person, firm or corporation no matter how long continued of specified property shall ever ripen into any title, interest or right against specified public owners. (Italics added.) The restriction clearly encompasses the acquisition of any property interest based on continuous adverse possession or use. [69] It is further argued that to construe the 1935 amendment to Civil Code section 1007 as exempting the water rights of cities and certain other public entities from loss by prescription brings the statute into conflict with the constitutional limitation of water rights to such water as shall be reasonably required for the beneficial use to be served (Cal. Const., art XIV, § 3; City of Pasadena v. City of Alhambra, supra, 33 Cal.2d at p. 925). [70] This argument is without merit. Exemption from prescription does not change the nature of the right itself; the right is inherently the same whether prescription is precluded by exemption or is avoided by appropriate legal action before expiration of the prescriptive period. No water right, regardless of exemption from prescription, affords entitlement to water in excess of the constitutional limitation. Each kind of water right or claimed water right against which prescription is asserted in the present case is limited in scope to the amount of water which the holder of the right reasonably requires for the beneficial uses that the right authorizes, and no such right entitles the holder to prevent others from using water not so required. ( City of L.A. v. City of Glendale, supra, 23 Cal.2d at pp. 74-75 (pueblo right); Peabody v. City of Vallejo (1935) 2 Cal.2d 351, 367 [40 P.2d 486] (riparian right); Stevens v. Oakdale Irr. Dist., supra, 13 Cal.2d 343, 351 (right to recapture return flow from imported water); City of Pasadena v. City of Alhambra, supra, 33 Cal.2d at pp. 925-926 (appropriative right; see fn. 70, ante ); Burr v. Maclay Rancho Water Co., supra, 154 Cal. 428, 435-437 (overlying right).) It is claimed that the singling out of the water rights of certain public entities for exemption from prescription under Civil Code section 1007 results in unlawful discrimination against other public and private owners of water rights. However, the legislative power may constitutionally be exercised to prescribe reasonable conditions and priorities in the distribution of water. ( East Bay M.U. Dist. v. Dept. of P. Wks. (1934) 1 Cal.2d 476, 481 [35 P.2d 1027].) The exemption at issue here is that of a city's rights to water for its municipal supply. [71] A legislative decision to give priority to municipal uses of water [72] is a reasonable basis for the classification. [73] Defendants contend that even if section 1007 immunizes the property of cities and other public entities from the acquisition of prescriptive rights by private parties, it does not interfere with the acquisition of prescriptive rights by public entities against each other. It is argued that the phrase person, firm or corporation by which the statute describes the class of parties whose possession is not permitted to ripen into prescriptive rights against specified publicly owned property refers only to private persons, firms, and corporations. We are of the opinion that the 1935 amendment to section 1007 was intended to enlarge the classes of property exempt from prescription by any party rather than to immunize such enlarged classes of property from prescription by private parties only. [74] The immunity from prescription under the prior case law preserved by the last sentence of the amendment (see fn. 74) extended to property owned by the state or any other public entity as long as such property was devoted to a public use. ( City of Oakland v. Burns (1956) 46 Cal.2d 401, 407 [296 P.2d 333]; People v. Chambers (1951) 37 Cal.2d 552, 556-557 [233 P.2d 557]; Reclamation Dist. No. 833 v. American Farms Co. (1930) 209 Cal. 74, 81 [285 P. 688].) [75] On the other hand the prior case law permitted the rights of the state or a local governmental entity in property not devoted to a public use and owned in a proprietary capacity to be lost through adverse possession culminating in prescription. ( Henry Cowell Lime & Cement Co. v. State (1941) 18 Cal.2d 169, 172 [114 P.2d 331].) If the property was owned by the governmental entity in its proprietary capacity but was nevertheless devoted to a public use, it remained immune from prescription. ( City of Oakland v. Burns, supra, 46 Cal.2d at p. 407.) [76] The decisions forbidding acquisition of prescriptive title to property owned by the state or a local governmental body and devoted to a public use make no distinction based on the private or governmental nature of the party making the prescriptive claim. The following statement of the rule demonstrates its absolute nature: `It is immaterial where the title  that is, the record title  is held, whether by the state at large, or by a county, or by some municipal department or other official body. There can be no adverse holding of such land which will deprive the public of the right thereto, or give title to the adverse claimant, or create a title by virtue of the statute of limitations. The rule is universal in its application to all property set apart or reserved for public use, and the public use for which it is appropriated is immaterial. The same principles which govern the adverse holding of a street, a public square, a quay, a wharf, a common, apply to the adverse holding of a schoolhouse. The public is not to lose its rights through the negligence of its agents, nor because it has not chosen to resist an encroachment by one of its own number, whose duty it was, as much as that of every other citizen, to protect the state in its rights.' This rule has been often repeated in the opinions of this court. [Citations.] ( People v. Kerber (1908) 152 Cal. 731, 734 [93 P. 878].) Relying on prior California decisions and on the 1935 amendment to Civil Code section 1007, this court held that adverse user by the public of land devoted to public use as a municipal airport could not result in any implied dedication of the land as a public street because title to such land cannot be acquired by prescription against a municipal corporation or subdivision of the state. ( City of Oakland v. Burns, supra, 46 Cal.2d 401, 406.) Decisions in other jurisdictions have rejected prescriptive claims by local governmental bodies against property of the state or its subdivisions. ( Hoffman v. City of Pittsburgh (1950) 365 Pa. 386 [75 A.2d 649]; Board of Education of Memphis City Schools v. Shelby County (1927) 155 Tenn. 212 [292 S.W. 462]; Trustees of University of South Carolina v. City of Columbia (1917) 108 S.C. 244 [93 S.E. 934].) [77] No legislative purpose appears for the enactment of the 1935 amendment to Civil Code section 1007 other than to extend to all property of the specified governmental entities, whether or not devoted to a public use, the exemption from prescriptive claims theretofore attached only to the property of such entities which was devoted to a public use. (See Southern Pac. Co. v. City & County of San Francisco, supra, 62 Cal.2d 50, 53, fn. 1.) (16) In support of their contention that the 1935 amendment precluded prescription only by private persons, firms or corporations, defendants cite statements by this court that in the absence of express words to the contrary, neither the state nor its subdivisions are included within the general words of a statute. ( Estate of Miller (1936) 5 Cal.2d 588, 597 [55 P.2d 491]; Balthasar v. Pacific Elec. Ry. Co. (1921) 187 Cal. 302, 305 [202 P. 37, 19 A.L.R. 452].) But this rule excludes governmental agencies from the operation of general statutory provisions only if their inclusion would result in an infringement upon sovereign governmental powers. Where ... no impairment of sovereign powers would result, the reason underlying this rule of construction ceases to exist and the Legislature may properly be held to have intended that the statute apply to governmental bodies even though it used general statutory language only. ( Hoyt v. Board of Civil Service Commrs. (1942) 21 Cal.2d 399, 402 [132 P.2d 804]; see Nestle v. City of Santa Monica (1972) 6 Cal.3d 920, 933 [101 Cal. Rptr. 568, 496 P.2d 480]; Flournoy v. State of California (1962) 57 Cal.2d 497, 498-499 [20 Cal. Rptr. 627, 370 P.2d 331]; State of California v. Marin Mun. W. Dist. (1941) 17 Cal.2d 699, 704 [111 P.2d 651].) Pursuant to this principle, governmental agencies have been held subject to legislation which by its terms applies simply to any person. ( Hoyt v. Board of Civil Service Commrs., supra ; Flournoy v. State of California, supra ; State of California v. Marin Mun. Water Dist., supra .) (15b) We construe the word person, in the 1935 amendment's provision that no possession by any person, firm or corporation shall ripen into prescriptive title against certain public entities, to include governmental agencies. This construction does not infringe on their sovereign powers. [78] Such agencies are thereby deprived of nothing except the power to take away the property rights of their fellow public entities through adverse possession. Those other entities are thus protected against prescriptive invasion of their property rights from public as well as private sources. The result is not a diminution of sovereign powers but only the elimination of prescription as a means of transferring property from one arm of the government to another. [79]