Court Opinion

ID: 9590176
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:52:13.892266+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:11:30.450063
License: Public Domain

SCHAUER, J.
I dissent. In my view the opinion of the District Court of Appeal, authored by Justice Parker Wood and concurred in by Presiding Justice Shinn and Justice Vallée (reported in 257 P.2d 679-690), adequately discusses and correctly resolves all issues of law presented on this appeal.
From 1923 to June 26, 1941 (when ordinance No. 502 was passed), plaintiff’s property was zoned as residential prop*899erty. Not until after the city failed in an attempt to quiet title to the property, and in efforts to purchase it, extending over several years, did the city, in 1941, pass ordinance 502, thereby zoning the property so as to limit it to beach recreation activities and cause it to remain available for public use without requiring the public or any public body to expend any money therefor, and to remain without income to plaintiffs but subject to some $9,000 in annual taxes. At the time this action was commenced plaintiffs’ was the only privately owned property falling within the beach recreation zone (B-1). Moreover, the city had failed to provide plaintiffs with police protection to avoid destruction of a fence designed to protect the property from the encroaching public. These circumstances appear to me to constitute a clear and deliberate taking of the property for public use without the payment of compensation therefor.
Such taking of private property without compensation, as effected in this case, appears to me to go beyond any reasonable application of the police power of a constitutional state which would maintain capitalism as the foundation of its institutions. Capitalism is not to be ashamed of or whittled away. It encompasses the economic system which has brought our country to world leadership. It denotes a way of living in society and of having dealings with others for reciprocal benefits and with mutual gain; it thrives on free enterprise and competition; and it furnishes incentive to be diligent, efficient and thrifty. It means that a man is free, not a slave; that he alone or collectively with others may bargain for his labor and receive and possess the price thereof; that he alone or collectively with others may invest his earnings in real or other property; and that in either event he shall be protected in his right to work and in the ownership and enjoyment of his wealth.
The fact that a particular property is desirable for the public use does not make its private ownership unlawful or warrant using the power of government to destroy its value. Our Constitution envisages a taking for public use in all proper cases but it no more permits to the state a taking without paying fair compensation than it does to an individual. As between the state and an individual our first concern always should be to guard the rights of the individual, not to build up the power of the state. Under my view of constitutional American procedures the state, when it takes private property for the public use, must, if purchase for a *900fair price cannot be negotiated, proceed under the power of eminent domain, condemn the property desired, and pay the reasonable value as fixed by a jury. Taking the property as is here done does not appear to me to be encompassed within a reasonable exercise of police power by a constitutional state; it smacks more of calculated and arbitrary confiscation by a police state. Besides all that, I should like to think that the scheme here resorted to was beneath the honor of a self respecting American municipality.
For the reasons more fully developed in the able opinion of Mr. Justice Wood, above referred to, I would reverse the judgment.