Court Opinion

ID: 9532452
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:21:28.540169+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:28:45.929666
License: Public Domain

SPENCE, J.
Plaintiff sought to recover the unpaid balance allegedly due from defendant for the construction of a grain elevator. Upon the ground that plaintiff failed to allege that he was a licensed contractor (Bus. & Prof. Code, § 7031), defendant’s demurrer to plaintiff’s complaint was sustained without leave to amend. Plaintiff appealed and the judgment was reversed in order to afford plaintiff the opportunity to amend his complaint to show that the construction work was “incidental ... to farming” so as to avoid the state licensing requirement. (Bus. & Prof. Code, § 7049; Fraenkel v. Trescony, 40 Cal.2d 905 [256 P.2d 573].) Plaintiff thereupon amended his complaint and the case was tried upon the single issue of whether the farming exemption applied. The trial court found that it did not and therefore plaintiff’s failure to comply with the contractor’s license law precluded his recovery. (Bus. & Prof. Code, §§ 7026, 7028, 7031.) From the adverse judgment accordingly entered, plaintiff now appeals.
At the trial the court and both parties treated the holding in Fraenkel v. Bank of America, 40 Cal.2d 845 [256 P.2d 569], a companion case on the first appeal, as stating the governing principle: “that the construction must be located on a farm and must be incidental to the farmer’s own farming operations in order to be ‘incidental to farming,’ within the meaning of the exemption.” (P. 849.) Consistent with this interpretation of the statutory language, the trial court’s judgment, based upon its determination that the construction in question did not qualify under the farming exemption, must be affirmed.
Plaintiff, a licensed mechanical engineer, and defendant entered into a written contract calling for plaintiff’s construction of a grain elevator on a “cost plus ten per cent” basis. The elevator was built on property owned by defendant in the town of San Lucas. It was located on Main Street amidst business buildings and homes on town lots and adjacent to the Southern Pacific main line tracks. Nearby there were also commercially operated grain sheds and storage bins owned by another individual. The site for defendant’s grain elevator was approximately 3% miles from defendant’s farm and its only access therefrom was by public road.
*381The trial court found that the grain elevator was “not constructed on a farm, either actually or constructively”; that it “was designed with the intent that it would be usable primarily for the defendant’s own produce, but also for the storage of the grain of others on a rental basis”; and that such structure was “incidental to both farming and commercial operation by the defendant.” In line with these findings that the grain elevator was not located on a farm and was to be used to some extent for commercial purposes, the court concluded that the statutory farming exemption was of no avail to plaintiff and, in the admitted absence of the required contractor’s license, plaintiff could not recover.
Plaintiff contends that the evidence does not support the above findings except that portion declaring that the primary purpose of the grain elevator was for the storage of defendant’s own produce. In this regard, he cites these undisputed facts: that the size of the grain elevator, 1,000-ton capacity, was determined from the acreage and past harvests of defendant ; that any excess storage space would be available for rent to others only in the event defendant should have a “short season”; that in actual use the first year’s storage consisted of 800 tons of defendant’s own grain and 200 tons on rental, and in the next year’s storage the respective amounts were 700 tons of defendant’s own grain and 300 tons on rental; that defendant did not have a warehouseman’s license; and that defendant financed the construction of the grain elevator through a loan from the Commodity Credit Corporation with the understanding that such loans were allowed only for the purpose of erecting storage facilities for the farmer’s own produce, and not for commercial or other purposes. Under these circumstances, plaintiff distinguishes this case from Machinery Engineering Co. v. Nickel, 101 Cal.App.2d 748 [226 P.2d 78], where a hay processing mill ‘ ‘ [a] dmittedly . . . was not to be connected with any particular farm as a part thereof, or used in connection with any particular farm” but was “intended to be a commercial enterprise ... to grind the hay of farmers generally, located in the area” (pp. 751-752); and from California Emp. Com. v. Butte County etc. Assn., 25 Cal.2d 624 [154 P.2d 892], where a warehouse was owned by an incorporated cooperative association, the storage facilities were available alike to both members and nonmembers, and the association as so licensed was held “in essence a commercial enterprise —a profitable public warehouse business” (p. 636).
Plaintiff urges that since the construction of the grain ele*382vator was primarily for the purpose of storage of defendant’s own produce, and defendant only contemplated the rental of excess storage space in an effort to operate his overall farming enterprise at maximum efficiency, the limited rental use would not reasonably constitute the grain elevator a commercial operation nor deprive it of its fundamental character as a structure incidental to defendant’s own farming. However, the merits of plaintiff’s argument on this point need not be here decided, for the record clearly supports the finding that the grain elevator was not “located on a farm” as required for application of the exemption. (Fraenkel v. Bank of America, supra, 40 Cal.2d 845, 850.)
Admittedly, the grain elevator was erected on a town site, which was approximately 3% miles distant from defendant’s farm, and the only access between the two places was by a public road. The site was adjacent to the main railroad lines servicing the town; other nearby property was industrial or commercial in character rather than agricultural; and specifically, the parcel of land adjoining defendant’s town property was occupied by a commercially operated grain elevator for the use of neighboring farmers.  A farm is generally defined “as a tract of land used for raising crops or rearing animals—one devoted to agriculture, stock raising or some allied industry.” (Board of Supervisors v. Cothran, 84 Cal.App.2d 679, 682 [191 P.2d 506] ; see also Hagenburger v. City of Los Angeles, 51 Cal.App.2d 161, 164 [124 P.2d 345].)  It is true that in keeping with modern methods and advancement in mechanized operations, present-day farming may encompass the use of multiple scattered tracts rather than a single parcel of land, and the requirements for the efficient functioning of a large farming enterprise cannot be measured 4n the light of farming conditions as they existed “a century or more ago.” (Irvine Co. v. California Emp. Com., 27 Cal.2d 570, 582 [165 P.2d 908].) But despite such changes in the prevailing concept of a farming enterprise, still a structure “located on a farm” would reasonably envisage location on land devoted to agriculture as commonly understood to mean on land used for “the raising of crops, or pasture, or both” (35 C.J.S. p. 746) rather than location on property situated in a predominantly industrial or commercial sector of a town some miles from the actual farm on which the crops are produced.
Plaintiff argues that since defendant was a farmer and the owner of a farm, and the grain elevator was designed *383primarily for the storage of defendant’s own grain, such grain elevator thereby became part of defendant’s farm and was thus “located on a farm.” Such argument completely eliminates one of the two conjunctively required factors of the farming exemption as construed in Fraenkel v. Bank of America, supra, 40 Cal.2d 845, 849. From the mere fact that the construction is designed primarily for the storage of a farmer’s own farm products, it does not automatically follow that the construction is thereby “located on a farm.” As was said in Fraenkel v. Bank of America, supra, at page 850, it is only “if the grain elevator was built on defendant’s farm and designed to function as an incidental part of his own farming operations . . . [that] there would be a factual basis for holding such structure to be within the terms of the exemption as a ‘ construction or operation incidental to . . . farming.’ ” (Emphasis added.)
To hold otherwise, and permit the farming exemption to apply to construction work which is not performed on a farm, would seem to run counter to the purposes of the contractor’s licensing law enacted for the safety and protection of the public respecting structural improvements to real property wherein special skill, training and ability are required. (Loving & Evans v. Blick, 33 Cal.2d 603, 609 [204 P.2d 23] ; Franklin v. Nat C. Goldstone Agency, 33 Cal.2d 628, 632 [204 P.2d 37].)  In exempting construction “incidental to farming” from the state licensing requirements, the Legislature manifestly did not intend to include every structure bearing a possible relation to the farming industry and without regard for its location in relation to the farm. It therefore seems clear that the exemption should not be extended to office buildings, warehouses, grain elevators or similar structures constructed at sites far removed from the farm, and perhaps in the center of cities or towns, even though such facilities might be constructed for the sole use of a single farmer in connection with his own extensive farming operations. Rather, it is only where the particular structure is “located on a farm” and “designed to function as an incidental part” of the farmer’s own farming operations (Fraenkel v. Bank of America, supra, 40 Cal.2d 845, 850) that such structure thereby reasonably becomes “dissociated from the objects and purposes of the licensing law” (ibid., p. 849) and the farming exemption applies. Here the trial court found from the evidence that the grain elevator was not constructed “on a farm,” and accordingly plaintiff, as an unlicensed con*384tractor, was properly held to he precluded from maintaining the present action.
The judgment is affirmed.
Gibson, C. J., Traynor, J., and McComb, J., concurred.